The Green Book
by Linnet Oldknowe
Summary: Merry receives a summons from Rohan, but how can he think of leaving the Shire without Pippin by his side? Ch. 11: In 1422 SR, Merry and Pippin are reunited with the lasses who will become their wives. Corrected to include missing last page.
1. Prologue

The Green Book 

Being the memoirs of Meriadoc Brandybuck 

(with interruptions by Peregrin Took) 

Chapter One - Since We Were Very Young 

SR 1484 

Brandy Hall 

"Well," Pippin says, in that voice that tells me he would just as soon voice an opinion, but is showing great forbearance so as to spare my feelings. He gives the large volume resting atop my desk a gingerly poke for good measure, as if the thing might somehow be shamming dead, and could come to life at any instant, to the cost of one's fingertips. "You weren't thinking of...?" He falls silent, and for long minutes all I hear is the heavy tick of the mantelpiece clock just behind me, the crackle of the library fire and the leaden thud of my own heartbeat. 

I cross my arms over my chest in an attempt to dull the sound--to my own ears, at least--but Pip only shakes his head at me. 

"For someone who looks nothing at all like Frodo," he tells me, "you looked exactly like Frodo just then." He mutters something else beneath his breath, but one would need to possess elf-ears to determine what it was. 

"The book was a gift." I try clearing my throat, but it doesn't help; the great lump is still there, and my voice sounds odd.. "From Frodo. On his last birthday before..." 

"Ah." For just a moment, my cousin's eyes flash up at me, green as the book's dappled cover. "Before." Neither of us wants to say, "Before he went away forever." This economy of words isn't really like him but, at the same time, it's hardly necessary for Pip to actually state his thoughts: I read it all in that glance; in the tilt of his shoulders, in the caress of his fingertips on the soft leather. 

My poor, dear Merry, he means to say. After all this time, can't you put it to rest? Can't you leave it alone? 

"Frodo told me I should write in it. My own words. I've been..." How can I explain to him that the thoughts, the feelings, the dreams over which I have no control rise in me now like the Brandywine in Spring Flood, stronger than they ever were on all those nights I woke to Estrella's hand on my shoulder, or stroking my cheek, her gentle voice in my ears, telling me, "It's all right, now, Merry. It's all right. It's over now." 

"I've been a long time getting there," I finish up quietly. 

In the old days, I was the one who never cried. Once, not long after Frodo had gone, Samwise asked me how it was that I could kiss my cousin goodbye, watch the boat sail off, and never shed a tear? How I could ride home from that parting with a song on my lips? For the life of me, I can't remember what I told him--certainly nothing that made much sense. Perhaps that the songs were only a dam to hold the tears away? 

I no longer know if that is true, or WHAT is true, except that I've come to understand, I think, our dear Ringbearer's need to seek peace on that distant white shore, while at the same time missing him every single day since. I miss Sam now--solid, trustworthy, stouthearted, wise Samwise. And I miss my Estella, who slipped away from me in the Winter of 1482 (the same year Sam lost his Rosie, and he himself left the Shire). 

Two years now, or near enough, and I still expect to come upon my sweet and patient wife bustling round some corner of the Hall, a list in her hand, hair-ribbons flying. I'll often wake feeling Estella's warmth in our bed and stretch out my arms for her, only to find the empty space. She was, for me, the essence of the Shire itself: the deep roots; the tilled earth; the long, soft summer days. 

I find myself all but rootless now, nearly ready to run off down the road like Bilbo, without a pocket-handkerchief, following the first itinerant wizard that comes along--and the truth is, I felt that way even before the message came to me, by what circuitous route I can scarcely even guess, all the way from the plains of Rohan. 

The missive had been written out on fine parchment, in a well-schooled (if somewhat tremulous) hand, with the fair and courteous words usual to such a communication, all of which came down to this: Eomer King wished to see Master Holdwine again. 

And what did Master Holdwine wish? Oh, so many things they can hardly be listed: to ride out once more into the wide world and feel the wild wind in his face; to look upon old sights both sad and joyous; to talk and laugh and drink with old friends. To set down all the events of his life within the covers of a book given to him by a beloved cousin he would never see again, so that, perhaps, in the end, they might all make sense to him. 

What he doesn't want, most emphatically, is to grow old and foolish by his own fireside, never having accomplished any one of those things. 

But giving way to such thoughts can only lead to his shameful secret: he can't go without his Pippin, and he can't be so selfish as to ask his Pippin to come along. 

Pip clears his own throat, loudly, in an obvious bid for my wandering attention--wearied, no doubt, by my gaping at him for such a long time, with such a stupidly stricken expression. 

"You know, Merry," he tells me, after a slight pause for effect, and with what I can only believe is a deliberate thickening of his Tooklish accent, "I can't think that someone so very elderly as yourself should attempt this...story...on his own. At your age one is bound to get things upside-down and hind-side-to." Pippin says this, as he's said all such outrageous things over the years, with the green sparks dancing in his eyes, and the little crinkles at their corners--with that smile that curls up only the corners of his mouth, even as it lights his face entirely. "Someone...er...rich in wisdom." He's close to making himself laugh now, as he comes around the desk toward me. "And...ahem...suitably energetic." 

My eyes are brimming, but I can't help but laugh along with him, even if it is a poor sound. My Pip. My wonderful wise Pip, playing the fool for me. 

"Master Meriadoc the Magnificent," Pippin teases. He's quite close now, scarcely an arm's length away, and for all his ninety-four years, his face is as bright and full of mischief as ever it was. Not for the first time, I wonder exactly what change those Ent-draughts of so long ago wrought in us (besides stretching us to our unusual heights). We are old, but not aged--it's remarked upon wherever we go. 

"Thain Peregrin the First," I respond, rough-voiced, though with great effort at solemnity. 

However, I'm utterly unable to hold the pose--not with my Pip. I end up ruffling his hair, as I've done perhaps a million times since we were lads, and pulling him close with one arm round his neck, to plant a kiss upon his brow. Pippin rests his head upon my shoulder, just as simply and as comfortably as he has always done, the warm weight of him no burden at all, tendrils of his ever-flyaway hair tickling my cheek. 

"Oh, Merry," he sighs, as his arms reach out to circle my waist. We hold each other close for the longest time. Then, "I believe you're standing too close to the fire. There's a distinct smell of singed wool." 

I laugh again into his still-silky curls, even though my eyes have long since passed beyond the stage of feeling merely wet--and although I suspect that he might be right about my over-nearness to the study fire. Still, I don't move, not until Pip steers me away, three steps, as if we were dancing. 

"There, now," he murmurs, breaking away from our embrace only enough to see into my face, his expression changing as he takes note of the tears. "Oh, Merry," he breathes again, in a tone both amused and tender, "You CAN stay here to write your silly book, you know. You needn't be like Bilbo and go away forever." 

I try hard as I could to blink them back, but the tears spill over my lower lids in great profusion, and all of a sudden I can't bear to be looking so closely at my Pip, watching those moss-green eyes grow shadowed with concern. I turn my face, but Pippin's hands, rough now with callus, yet as gentle in their touch as I remember my mum's being, when I was quite small, rise to turn it back again. His thumbs stroke the tears from my cheeks. 

"Silly Merry," he tells to me, in that voice with which I never could argue. "Of course I'll go with you. Whatever did you imagine?" 

I shake my head violently, but again Pip holds it still. When had he got so strong? Years ago, it must have been, but have I only just noticed? I try to argue with him, even manage to articulate a word or so, of which "Thain" and "Faramir" are the only ones I can remember. Pippin merely continues to hold me. 

"Merry," he says at last, patiently, when I've spluttered to some sort of halt. "Don't quarrel with me. You know you can't win. Foolish Brandybuck." He steers me backwards, in another--for my part--awkward dance, until I sprawl into one of the overstuffed armchairs set a bit back from the fire. 

For a few moments he's busy across the room. Though I'm too blinded by emotion to see what he's doing, I can guess well enough: there's a clinking of glass upon glass, and a liquid sound. We are Hobbits, and we know such moments must call for something to eat or drink, or perhaps a quiet pipe shared between friends. Sure enough, Pip quite soon wraps my fingers round a cup, then drags up the footstool to sit before me. His toes brush mine, curling into the fur, and I laugh --he's done that since we were very young, absently, without thinking. It's a gesture I find comforting, without knowing why. 

"That's better," he tells me softly. "That's my merry Merry." 

I laugh again, a small hiccough of sound. 

"No more tears, my dear," he says, and rests one hand softly upon my knee. The other raises his own cup, and Pip's eyes close as he savors the good red wine. "Merry! This can't be the 1420!' 

"Hmn," I respond, finally imagining I might recognize my voice as my own. I sip, holding the flavor on my tongue: the warm crimson taste of sunshine, and youth. 

"You know," Pippin informs me, after a pause. "Honestly, you're no better at holding in a secret than Frodo ever was. Though at least I don't catch you traipsing all over the Shire, murmuring, 'Shall I ever look into this green valley again?'" Pip shakes his head, laughing. His impression of our departed cousin is flawless, and I marvel, not for the first time, at the way he can speak so easily of Frodo, when for me to do so is a knife-thrust to my heart--and even imitate his voice, with such perfect clarity after all these years. 

"How long have you known?" I manage to ask at last, though only after I've downed a good half of my wine. 

"Oh, I've read it in your face a long while now," Pippin answers. "Every time you've looked at me, you brows draw all together, with that little line between, and your mouth turns down--which can only mean that either I've been turned into a troll without my knowledge, or you're asking yourself, 'However will I tell Pip?'" He pauses for a healthy swallow from his own cup. "My sweet, silly Hobbit, even Sariadoc has noticed. He's no fool, for all that he's your son." 

What can I say to this? Pippin takes another drink, a little of the laughter leaving his face, though none of the kindness. 

"You wouldn't go without me," he says. A statement of fact. 

I shake my head. "Not so much wouldn't as couldn't." 

Pip has his pondering face on. "We should let the king know we're coming. Both the kings, actually. And there will be a great many papers to get through before we depart. I'll expect your help with them, you know. It's the least you can do, under the circumstances." He tips up his cup, catching the last drops of the 1420 in his mouth. "I'll like seeing Minas Tirith again. And Edoras, I think. And I won't miss being Thain, you know, so put that out of your mind. Faramir is more than ready to take on the job." 

"He'll miss you," I say quietly. 

"And I will miss him," Pippin answers, setting his cup down by the hearth and moving to a perch on the arm of my chair, "For I love him dearly. I love the Shire dearly, as well." His fingers twine gently in my hair, and I tip back my head to see his face better, so familiar, so beloved. "But you are my Merry," he concludes, "and that's all there is to it." 


	2. Winterfilth

Disclaimer: Nearly all of these characters were created by Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, whom I greatly esteem. No disrespect whatsoever is intended to Prof. Tolkien in anything I may write, and I make no profit from any of these stories. 

CHAPTER TWO 

SR 1484 

Brandy Hall 

We've been at it all day, Sariadoc and I, and I'd be quite willing to swear--on the Red Book, if necessary--that all we have to show for our work is a blistering headache (on my part; my son remains quite fresh and unruffled) and a teetering stack of documents grown several inches higher than when we began. Not for the first time in my life, I curse the Hobbit love of ceremony in all things: the ribbons, the seals, the seven signatures in red ink, all necessitating one of us to pop his head out the study door and nab whichever unsuspecting relation, lettered servant or unwary visitor happens to pass by at the given moment. Quite a motley assortment of witnesses we've acquired so far, and I do believe we've now managed to thoroughly annoy every Hobbit currently sheltering beneath Buck Hill. 

Sariadoc remains serene through it all, which I might have expected, really. He has his mother's pleasant, useful nature. I was never exactly certain whether, in his teens and tweens, he was entirely devoid of my own youthful wickedness, or merely so innocent in appearance that he never caught the blame for any mysterious bit of boyish naughtiness that took place round and about the Hall.. 

My grandfather, Old Rory, often told me that if ever a boy was born to be whipped, it was I--though it must be said, he never raised so much as a hand to me. Actually, knowing Rory, the words may well have been meant as a compliment. As everything Rory said in his later years was delivered in a gruff, booming voice (my grandfather having grown rather hard of hearing), accompanied by a steely stare from beneath fierce, bristling brows, one could scarcely be sure. 

My mum, Esmeralda Brandybuck, put things differently: she said that I'd been born with mischief on my face but goodness in my heart, and however many pranks I pulled in my younger days, I'd always tried to prove her right in that. Incorrigible I might have been, but never, I hope, unkind. 

Esmeralda was a Took, and Tookish through and through, heart and bones. Her eyes were moss-green, as most Tooks' are, indeed almost the same color as Pippin's eyes, and her mouth was like his too, with the little bow in the middle part and the small curls at the corners, made for smiling. The resemblance isn't at all surprising really, considering my mum and Pip's dad were brother and sister, and alike as two peas in a pod. Sariadoc resembles them as well, I think, with not a trace of Bolger about him, and more Took than Brandybuck to his face, though with eyes of blueish-grey, like mine, and his hair like mine once was (and is still, for the most part), a honey- brown. Indeed, I was once considered inordinately fair, for a Hobbit, in those old days, before so many of our young ones were born golden-haired. 

"Dad," a patient voice calls, and not for the first time, I suspect. A filled pipe--my good old one, with the pearl mouthpiece, that Bilbo gave me at Rivendell--appears over my shoulder, and I realize that Sariadoc has caught me out, writing in these pages when I ought to be working. Shamefaced, I accept the pipe from his hand, and the light he offers me as well. I'll return later, I think, after smoking a companionable pipe with my son to banish the dreariness of the past hours. No more business for today! 

I've a story to tell instead, one Frodo gave me some parts of, and my dear mum others, and in which I do not appear, unless it is as a thought, or a hope, or a wish. 

The Tale of the Master's Heir's Wife, and How She Did Not Run Away 

21 Winterfilth, SR 1381 

The Brandywine 

When the time came near for Mistress Esmeralda Brandybuck of Brandy Hall to celebrate her forty-fifth birthday, she carefully reminded no one at all--in fact, she quite hoped, with every bit of Tookish contrariness in her soul, that not a one of the shirttail relatives or relations-by-marriage with whom she passed her days would happen to remember that the twenty-second day of the month of Winterfilth had, in the past, occassioned any doings of a celebratory nature. 

Frankly, however, she doubted her ability to attract such good fortune. She was, after all, wife to the heir of the Master of the Hall, and as such a person of importance. At the very least, there would be feasting and music, dancing and merriment, ale quaffed and toasts given, the whole proceedings crowned by the appearance of a cake fairly blazing with its forty-five candles, followed by presents handed out by the bushel-load. Through it all she would be expected to smile, to laugh, to accept with every appearance of joy the kisses and complements showered upon her. 

The twenty-second arrived tomorrow, in fact, and despite the whispers that ceased when she entered a room, the mysterious cracklings of paper behind closed doors and the secretive grins. Esme understood that plans had been made, and were she present, she would have to enjoy them. The festivities were meant well, she KNEW, and intended to make her happy, but she could not BE happy, not just then, despite all the tender looks, the gentle sighs of "Poor Esme, dear, it will be better soon," or all the parties in the great, wide world. 

Sorrow was contrary to Hobbit nature, just as it's in the nature of those who love us to want to take our sorros away.. She made her family uncomfortable, and Esme regretted that it must be so. 

She should not be outside at all just now. Not so soon, in the Autumn cold and damp, with her toes squelching into the mud of the riverbank as she shifted from foot to foot, trying to decide what in the Shire she ought to do. 

"Lawks,:" she said, which was a low expression, a ridiculous expression, really, and one not befitting a gentlehobbit like herself (Mother Menegilda would say) picked up from her old nurse and never completely abandoned. "What will Saradoc think of me?" 

And what indeed WOULD her husband think if he saw her now, shivering beside the Brandywine in a pair of his old breeches? As a lass, she'd often dressed in lad's clothes for a lark, the better to keep up with her brother Dinny on his escapades. And why not? She could run far and fast, climb any tree in the Shire, or toss a stone as well as any lad and better than most. She'd been the first one of their circle to smoke an entire pipeful of weed without going sick, the first to swim the Brandywine at that fast place and come out laughing on the other side. Saradoc had admired her very much, in those days before she'd failed him, and they weren't truly so very far behind her, were they? How could they be, when such emotions still crowded inside her? 

How had she managed to wed her childhood friend, the boy who'd so hero-worshiped Esme the Strong, Esme the Fearless, and still wound up an old married lady, responsible for the welfare of a teeming (and ever increasing) swarm of Hobbit-folk? When had all the adventures ended and the dull rounds of responsibility begun? Why couldn't they all just be responsible for themselves? 

Except that it wasn't the responsibility that troubled her, really. When had she ever shrunk from any challenge? It was that she'd tried, and failed, at the one thing in the world she and her Saradoc wanted most, the thing any grown-up Hobbit lass in the Shire could accomplish--tried and failed again, and again and again. Five times failed, until her confidence had broken and the sorrow swept in to overwhelm her, like the Autumn Floods swamping the banks of the Brandywine. 

Esme wrapped her husband's old green coat tighter round herself, commanding her body to cease its shivering. She'd come near one of her favorite places on the river now: down below Buck Hill and out of eyeshot of the Hall's windows, tucked beneath an ancient willow whose foliage, in the Summer months, created a green cave filled with light, perfect for lying on one's back and eating apples, gazing up at the scraps of cloud and blue sky tossed between the rustling leaves. 

In Winter, or almost-Winter, as it was now, the branches hung straight and bare, like some water-creature's drawn-out hair in one of the old stories. Still, Esme ducked beneath their curtain to step inside, her footsteps as soundless as any Hobbit's would be on a wet riverbank. All around her, the withies whispered softly in the wind, a curtain of secrets, ever-moving. 

One secret hidden there, however, kept quite still, or as still as a little Hobbit can be, on a cold day, when weeping alone beneath a willow tree. Esme felt herself freeze, motionless as any doe of the forest scenting danger--but there was no danger here, only a small back curved over with sadness, shaking silently. The lad's dark curls had gone flat with the wet, and more damp crept up the back of his trousers, as it will when one plants oneself without protection on a sodden riverbank. On the whole, she'd didn't think she'd ever come upon a lad more miserable, or more lonesome. 

Careful now, not wishing to startle the lad in his grief, Esme moved forward, but for all her care, it seemed the little one heard her approach. His head whipped round, a pair of eyes bluer than any she'd ever seen blazing out at her. "Why can't you just leave me a...?" he began, his voice sharp with anger and childishly high, as Esme, startled, staggered backward a step. 

"Frodo?" she breathed. Indeed, she should have known him at once: this was Primula's lad, after all, and Primula Brandybuck had been her staunchest friend at the Hall. "Frodo Baggins?" 

In a breath, all the fire seemed to go out of him. The startling eyes dropped, and in the soft, dull voice she only half remembered, on the edges of a hundred polite responses, he answered, "Yes'm. Cousin Esme, I mean to say." 

Her own voice transformed to the voice of the almost-Mistress of Brandy Hall. "Frodo, what on earth are you doing out here? You'll catch your death." 

The lad squelched up a handful of riverbank mud, then opened his fingers and let it drop. "Nothing," he answered, in the same dead, quiet tone. His nails, Esme noticed, were quite bitten down, to the quick and beyond, and now crusted with mud as well. Who looked after this sad little Hobbit? she wondered with a start. Menegilda? Someone amongst the aunts and uncles and cousins? Why should any child of Brandy Hall look so absolutely forlorn? 

"Have the other children left you alone, Frodo?" she asked gently. Could it be she'd stumbled across some game of hide-and-go-seek? 

She realized, then, that poor Frodo was, in absolute fact, the only actual child IN the family at this time. Yes, there was little Berilac, Merimac's boy, but he was no more than a baby, and the newest one, Merimas, even younger. Perhaps Frodo played with the children of the servants, or the artisans, or visited the farms round about, but somehow Esme doubted this was the case. 

"Other children?" the lad echoed, in much the same tone he might have used if she'd asked if he wanted to go see a dragon next door. 

"Ah." Nonplused, Esme took a seat beside Frodo on the bank, swinging her legs out over the water. The soggy mud quickly soaked through her breeches, just as it had through his, squelchily unpleasant against her skin, and even colder than she had imagined. The Brandywine swirled beneath her feet, dark and tempestuous. 

"Do you know," she told Frodo, "That this spot is called 'the hole in the river?' I was warned against it as a child, when I first visited here." 

"This is where my parents drowned," Frodo answered. "Or near here. Quite close by, I think. Something overturned the boat and my father fell in and my mum tried to save him but she got caught." His hand, delicate and pale, despite the grime, made a swirling gesture over the water. "Or her dress was too heavy. They tell the story a great many different ways." 

"It's called gossip," Esme responded. "Only some of it's true. The rest..." She shrugged her shoulders. "Isn't. It's hard not to let it trouble you." 

"Yes." Frodo nodded, though with which of her statements the lad was agreeing, Esme couldn't exactly be sure. A silence fell between them, but not an uncomfortable one. 

"You were going to have a baby," said the lad at last, looking not at her, but out across the Brandywine. 

"Yes," Esme agreed. "I was." 

The blue eyes turned to her once more. "Are you sad?" 

"Yes," she answered, around the lump that had formed, instantly, in her throat. "I'm very, very sad." 

Frodo gave another nod. "So am I." 

"I thought so," Esme said quietly. "Are you running away?" 

"Yes," he told her, in a tone that brooked no argument. "Are you?" 

"I thought I'd go to Bree." Esme dipped her toes in the icy river, feeling its chill currents catch and pull at her skin. "Or perhaps even further." 

"I'm going to Rivendell," Frodo informed her. Slowly, his small, cold hand crept over, until it lay against her own. "To see the Elves. Like Cousin Bilbo." 

Carefully, tenderly, Esme rubbed the half-frozen little fingers. "I think I should like that," she answered. "To see the Elves. May I come along?" 

Frodo considered this. "Yes," he told her. "If you like. We might have great adventures." He climbed to his feet, his hand still clasped in Esme's, as warmly as it might be.. 

"We might very well," she agreed. "I am a Took, you know. We're known for adventuring." 

"Are you?" The lad considered further. "That's all right then." He waited patiently as Esme rose, clumsier than he, and equally muddy. " Do you think we ought to have our tea first, Cousin?" 

"I think, perhaps, that might be wise." Esme held back the willow withies to let Frodo pass below. "We ought to discuss our provisioning, as well." 

"Yes," the lad replied gravely. "We ought. And it might be best to set out tomorrow, as it will be dark soon." 

Hand-in-hand, they climbed the slippery path to Brandy Hall, pausing outside the East Door to brush the worst of the mud from one another's clothes. By the time they'd finished, Frodo was nearly smiling, and Esme found herself laughing aloud. 

Frodo opened the door gravely, waiting until his cousin had passed through before he followed. Once inside, he hung his muddy coat gently on the peg. "I really will travel to Rivendell one day, Cousin Esme," he told her. 

Esme brushed the wet hair back from his startling eyes. His face was fine and pale beneath her touch, as if Frodo were some changeling Elf-child, rather than a Hobbit lad. "I loved your mum, you know, Frodo," she whispered, like a secret. "She was my very dearest friend." 

He nodded. "I remember, a little. I do. Only it gets harder. Do you think the Elves sail away because it hurts too much for them to remain here, Cousin? Do Elves hurt the way we do? I can't imagine they have gossip, or those LOOKS." 

Esme closed her eyes, thinking of the five times now she'd felt so very, very sad, and wishing there WAS some safe harbor one could steer one's little boat to, in order to escape such pain. "I don't know, love," she answered at last. "Maybe they feel it more than we Hobbits do, and that's why they've been given such a special place." 

Frodo's small, dirty hands reached up to touch the wetness on her cheeks. "When you have a little lad," he said, " I'll be his friend as well as his..." The lad's face screwed up in concentration, as he tried to work out the relationship. "...As his first cousin, once removed. I won't ever let him feel alone, or frightened." 

For just a moment, their eyes met, and they understood one another very well indeed. 

"I know you will, Frodo," Esme told him at last, softly, in that rare moment of silence within the bustle of Brandy Hall. "I know you will." 

And Frodo kept his word.   
  



	3. Missing

Disclaimer: Nearly all of these characters were created by Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, whom I greatly esteem. No disrespect whatsoever is intended to Prof. Tolkien in anything I may write, and I make no profit from any of these stories. 

Many, many thanks to Tindomiel, Riona, DOJ and EloraCooper4 for their kind reviews! The Green Book is my first LotR fic, which makes the encouragement all the more appreciated. 

Chapter Three 

Brandy Hall, SR 1484 

An Interruption 

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw what Merry had written on his title page. Interruptions by Peregrin Took, indeed! I should be put out with him, especially when one considers that I rode half the night to be here this morning, arriving just after second breakfast, only to find that my cousin has gone away somewhere, and isn't expected back until after tea. 

I suppose I ought to have let him know I was coming. 

I've passed the time well enough, I'd say. Brandy Hall sets a fine table on all occasions, and after a lovely second breakfast I amused myself--or *meant* to amuse myself--by reading what my cousin had to say. Now I find myself feeling quite wistful instead, and I will have to shake myself out of *that* before Merry returns. Odd, the things one doesn't know about one's own family. All these years, I considered Auntie Esme one of the jolliest of my relations, and good fun, but I never thought of her, exactly, as anything *but* an aunt, or pondered why Merry was her only, in a family as large and varied as the Brandybucks. Perhaps, in some part of myself, I thought one Merry enough for any Hobbit mum to handle. 

And then there's the matter of Frodo. I confess it gives my heart a bit of a twist, and makes a funny, salty taste come into my mouth to think of that forlorn little lad beneath the tree. I knew, of course, that his parents had died (roundabout 1380, I think that was--Merry would know for certain), and that he'd lived here at Brandy Hall before Bilbo adopted him and made him his heir (this was in 1389, when Frodo was twenty-one--I know this one for certain; it was the year before I was born). Admittedly, I'm rather wooly-headed about such things, but it never once occurred to me to ask Frodo who looked after him before Bilbo, or how he felt during that time, other than some vague-ish notion that he'd missed his parents. 

And how had Merry felt, to see his beloved big cousin go away?--for Hobbiton must certainly have seemed like the other end of the world at such a time. 

Here is proof indeed that it doesn't pay to think too much, for I've made myself quite downhearted, and I shall have to go hunt out some of my youngest cousins, and perhaps join them for a rousing game of stick-and-ball, or teach them a few inappropriate songs or stories. I've always found the little ones good for shaking the darker clouds away. I meant to have a houseful of my own, like dear old Sam with his baker's dozen, or at least Merry's three or four. I never loved another lass as I did Diamond, though--as I *still* love Diamond--and I continue to feel rather muddled about the way all that turned out. 

Or it may be, in my way, that I'm grateful (not that I'm proud to write that it is so) for much as I try to keep in mind what Gandalf told me, about the white shore and the sudden sunrise beyond this world, I also recall what my dear Merry suffered, when his little Floramonde slipped away in the terrible Flux of 1426, and how he still mourns his Estella, after all their sweet years of companionship. I'll say myself that Estella was the kindest and best of all the lasses I have ever known, and If I'd been a wiser Hobbit than I was and am, I'd have married her myself, not run so foolishly after silky black curls and a pretty face. 

Oh, but Estella and my Merry were well-suited, and if I'm sad about anything, it's that Diamond never saw in me any beauty whatsoever, unless it was that of the Took money and position--and what's that to do, really, with the silly Hobbit that is Peregrin Took? 

Long Cleeve's a longish ride, even from Tuckborough, but I *shall* have to visit Diamond before we go. At least we're good enough friends now, for that. Faramir is a trustworthy lad (and I can't help thinking of him a lad, though he is a fine, grown Hobbit of fifty-four, with a darling wife and two little lads of his own). He will look after his mum, I know. 

Now I've gone and made myself sadder than sad, which is a very foolish thing for an old Hobbit to do under any circumstances--but here's Merigrin, Sariadoc's little lad peeping round the door, though I've no doubt he's been forbidden, in very strong words indeed, to disturb the Thain at his labors. 

"What do you say, Master Meri," I ask without turning, "To a good game of Hobbits and Trolls?" 

The little lad's squeal of delight is all the answer I need. 

* * * 

MISSING 

Brandy Hall, SR 1389 

Merry found the leather cases going into Frodo's room quite interesting, and the wooden crates packed with straw even more so, though he thought his cousin rather a big lad to need *all* his books and toys and things just for a little visit. After all, he himself was only seven, and when *he'd* gone to stay with Uncle Dinny and Auntie Egg at the Great Smials, he had only taken with him a few clothes, his one special blanket and his floppy bunny, Rags. 

He'd been sorry, too, even to have brought poor Rags, for Pim had teased him about still sleeping with a soft toy, and Pervinca had bit off one of the rabbit's button eyes, then swallowed it, which Merry did not consider at a proper way for a cousin to behave, no matter how small. He'd never ruined any of *her* toys. 

Frodo's room made interesting sounds, as well, once all his possession had been loaded into the cart, leaving only the one small rucksack behind. Lovely, echoey sounds. Merry amused himself very much by standing in the exact center, than off by the door to his room, then over near the window, yelling in his loudest voice to see which location made the best noise (by the door won, but only by a little). 

At last, Frodo came back in, shaking his head, to see what all the rumpus was about. Merry demonstrated for his benefit, but the room didn't perform quite up to expectations, not with Frodo there. 

Merry plopped down on the bare, scrubbed floor. "There. You've ruined it," he told his cousin accusingly. 

"What's that, Mer?" Frodo asked, in his kindest voice, with such a sad look on his face that Merry feared he'd gone too far. He flung his arms round the older lad's waist, rubbing his nose against the soft velvet of Frodo's waistcoat. 

"It's all right," he muttered. "Doesn't matter." 

"Oh, Merry," Frodo stroked his curls gently, which should have been comforting--it always had been in the past--but just now Merry's stomach was sending him a message he didn't quite understand, and he stepped back away from his cousin, trying to figure out what the trouble could possibly be. 

"Dear me, what a fierce expression!" Frodo laughed. "You looked rather like one of Farmer Maggot's dogs, just then. I thought you were going to bite me!" 

"I'd never bite *you,*" Merry answered, laughing himself. Whatever the scary thing was, that gave him his moment of fright, their laughter had chased it away. 

"Ah, so I'm safe from you, am I? Not like poor Berilac?" 

Poor Berilac, indeed! 

"He held me down," Merry protested, "And he put a frog--" Merry's face twisted with outrage and disgust. "In my mouth! It was horrid. And he said he'd hold my mouth shut 'til I swallowed. Only I didn't." 

Frodo bent for his rucksack, but his cousin's sharp eyes caught another shift in the older lad's expression that made the fluttery, worried feeling go through him again, though, "We'd best get out to the cart, Mer," was all he said. "Your mum and dad are waiting." 

"Yes, I know," Merry answered impatiently. He wondered what made Frodo so slow in opening and closing the door out into the corridor, and why he ran his fingertips gently over its carved pattern of vines and leaves before he turned away. Everyone had been acting terribly odd this week, and he didn't know why. "But don't you want to hear what happened with Berilac?" 

"Yes, yes, of course," Frodo answered vaguely. He'd started striding too fast for Merry's shorter legs to keep up comfortably, so Merry hurried until he was nearly running, catching hold of the hem of Frodo's coat for good measure. 

"Kicked him," Merry panted. "And then I twisted away and spat the poor little frog out. And that's when I bit Berilac." The memory held a certain satisfaction. "Only it wasn't nice." 

"I should say not," Frodo replied. "Kicking and biting your cousin. Stars above, Merry!" 

Merry shook his head, exasperated by the older lad's thickness. "Frodo! I meant his *hand* wasn't nice. It tasted all swampy, and froggy. So I had to eat some of Grandmother's strawberries to get the taste out. And I spoilt my new shirt, rather, with the juice. Only it was muddy already." He put on a little extra burst of speed in order to pass Frodo by and give himself the pleasure of opening the big West Door. It was a skill he'd only recently acquired, and Merry loved the cool, slippery round feel of the knob inside the circle of his small hands. The door was heavy too, and that he could manage it alone must mean that he was growing into quite a big, strong lad. 

Frodo reached down to ruffle his hair. "Look at you, Merry! I'd no idea you'd mastered that yet! How strong you are!" 

Merry beamed. "And clever too!" he reminded his cousin, not meaning to boast, really. 

"Yes, and clever too," Frodo agreed, laughing--but his face didn't have a laughing look. It had gone strange again, distracted and sad. 

Merry frowned at his back as Frodo passed by. 

The cart was indeed waiting, parked in the gravel drive in front of Brandy Hall. His mother and father stood deep in what didn't seem happy conversation on the nearer side. Merry bit his lip, scritching his bare toes into the stones. Why did everyone have to be so funny these days? And why wouldn't someone explain? 

"Well, lad, is that the last of it then?" Saradoc asked, catching sight of the two boys. The heartiness in his normally deep, warm voice didn't sound exactly real, but he smiled as he took the rucksack from Frodo's hand, securing the bag where it could be easily reached. 

"All but one little parcel," Merry's mother cried, and her voice, at least, rang as clear and true as it ever did, which made the knot in Merry's middle relax a little. She ran to them, sweeping her son up into her arms--unexpectedly, for he'd really become too big for his mum to carry. Merry went into an ecstasy of giggles as she swung him round, tickling his sides, and came down quite 

breathless when she deposited him on the driver's box. 

"Mum!" Merry sang out--he'd almost forgotten, in his confusion, to share with her his marvelous discovery. "Did you know Frodo's room makes lovely echoes now, if you yell loudly?" He expected his mother to be interested in the news--perhaps, when they'd all come home again from visiting Bag End, they could try out the echoes together. 

But, to Merry's disappointment, Esme only gave Saradoc a grown-up kind of look, and no one said anything as she swung up on one side of the box and Merry's dad on the other. Usually, Merry liked to sit between them, up high where he could see the whole of the world from the safe little valley of their shared warmth, breathing in his mum's comfortable, clean, gardeny smell and the way his dad smelt of trees and hay and the vague spiciness of pipeweed. He loved the way the road rippled on before them, and the soothing swish of the draft-ponies tails, in time with the bright clip-clop of their hooves on gravel--but today seemed made up of strange looks and words not spoken, and it seemed dangerous to let his cousin out of his sight. 

Frodo had folded down the little padded bench in the space between the box and the cart proper, and so, as they wound down along the front of the Hall, and down the hill-road that led to the Bucklebury Ferry landing-stage, Merry squirmed over the box's backrest, hanging a moment by his fingertips before dropping neatly into Frodo's lap. 

"Oof!" Frodo exclaimed. He'd been looking elsewhere, and hardly expecting an armful of determined Hobbit-lad. "What's all this, Merry? You didn't fall off, did you?" 

Merry favored him with a disdainful glare--until he realized his cousin was only joking. He pushed his face once more into Frodo's waistcoat, wondering, not for the first time, why the older lad smelled so different from other Hobbits. Instead of gardens or fields, his scent was higher and clearer, like cool water in a stream or well. He smelled the way Merry imagined an Elf would smell. 

He held still then, waiting for a bit of Frodo's gentle teasing, but none followed. Instead, Frodo pulled him more firmly onto his lap, wrapping Merry up in both arms. Frodo's chin pressed lightly against the top of his curls. 

Merry wasn't good at holding still, usually, but just then he felt he couldn't move. He hardly dared even to breathe. Something was happening. Something *was.* Why wouldn't anyone tell him? By nature, he mistrusted secrets--they made his mind whirl round and round on itself--even the good kind, like what sweets and little surprises he'd find tucked into his hood on Yule Morn. Just lately he'd discovered other secrets, such as what had *really* happened to his five white ducks when the fox got into their pen. And why Great-Uncle Dodinas suddenly didn't come out to meals after last month. 

When Merry asked, Frodo always tried to explain things to him, clearly and honestly, until Merry understood. 

But just now he found himself too frightened to ask anything. Instead, he busied himself with watching how the cart rolled slowly and carefully onto the Ferry, and how his dad poled them across to the Marish side, then drove the cart off again. He noticed that someone had left a round golden pumpkin on the landing-stage, and he counted the white rocks in their neat line up Ferry-lane, though he had to stop because he hadn't yet learned what came after fifty. He wondered whether they'd stop by Farmer Maggot's house on their way, and if Grip's seven pups were all grown now, and what were their names, and would Mistress Maggot ask them to second breakfast, and would there be mushrooms, because the mushrooms that grew on Maggot's land were particularly fine. 

Except that he felt very funny inside, and not like mushrooms, or stopping. Mostly, he felt like turning around and going back home, with Frodo still holding him, or maybe telling him a story. None of those things were like him at all, except the bit about a story. Merry was very fond of stories--though he was also, usually, extremely fond of mushrooms as well, not to mention visits and journeys. 

They traveled on many miles, not stopping at Farmer Maggot's gate, with no one saying much of anything, until Frodo spoke up suddenly. 

"Cousin Saradoc, did you know Berilac has been bullying Merry?" 

Merry's dad glanced back over his shoulder, shaking his head. "That lad!" 

"Weren't meant to tell," Merry muttered into his cousin's chest. Frodo returned to him a look of gentle reproval. 

"I'm a big lad," Merry informed him, but his voice sounded odd, as if was bordering on tears. 

"No one doubts that, Mer," Frodo answered kindly. 

"And you look out for me." Merry raised his face, watching his cousin's face intently. 

*Now,* he thought. *Now I'll know.* The small, tingling suspicious part of himself flared all at once to fill his entire body. Merry felt his jaw drop open, but had no power to make it go shut again, because in an instant he *did* know. His brain, without him even knowing, had been quietly fitting together the pieces of the puzzle, working out the sad looks, the silences, the delightfully echoing room just beside his own, the cartload of possessions behind him. 

All Merry's breath hissed out of him, and he couldn't seem to get any more. 

Frodo wasn't going to Cousin Bilbo's for a visit. Frodo meant to go there to stay, forever and ever, and when he and his mum and dad came home again, they'd be leaving his dear, beloved cousin behind. 

Which meant... 

Merry at last managed a little hitching breath, not enough to stop the burning in his chest, but enough to send away most of the colored spots whirling in front of his eyes. 

He must have been very, *very* bad to make Frodo want to leave him. 

Merry knew he made too much noise sometimes, and he'd been known to go into Frodo's room and play with his things when he'd been told not to, and that one time he'd spilled jam on Frodo's lovely book with the maps and the picture of the dragon, but most of that had come off, and besides, it was strawberry jam, and red, which made the stain look like blood, and therefore interesting. 

His mouth closed a little then, and he felt his lips go very round, as if they wanted to say, "Oh!" 

He'd thought Frodo loved him best of all cousins, even if he was naughty sometimes. He'd thought *that* was forever and ever. 

Merry's head went swimmy. His stomach gave a big sideways lurch and before he even knew it was going to happen, he was being horribly, miserably sick all over himself and the floor of the cart. Frodo, perhaps catching some warning in his young cousin's expression, had jumped back enough to miss the worst of it, but he moved in close again in time to take Merry's shoulders, leaning him over the lip of the cart before the second bout hit. 

Merry hung weakly in his hold, head drooping, the cart's hard wooden edge hurting his chest. No matter how he fought it, his stomach wouldn't seem to quiet down: he kept retching until he felt he'd turn inside out and, to his shame, he'd begun to cry as well, tears of humiliation, and a sorrow too huge for his small body to contain. 

"Whoa, there!" his father called, and the cart shuddered a little as Saradoc set the brake. He must have climbed down from the box then, because Frodo was handing Merry over the side and into his dad's waiting arms. 

Saradoc carried him away to the green, grassy verge, laying him on his side in the shade of the bank. 

"Ssh, ssh," his father crooned, "Just lie quiet now, lad. The worst is past." 

*No,* Merry wanted to shout back. *No it isn't.* In his heart, he knew the worst hadn't even begun. He lay shaking upon the cool green, and all he could manage to say when his father asked how he did was, "Sorry. Sorry." 

"For what, Mer?" Frodo's quiet voice asked. "There's no harm done. Nothing a bit of soap and water won't wash away. Do you want me to sit with you while your mum and dad set things to rights?" 

"Mummy," Merry managed to whisper. His throat felt all tight and sore, his face hot--though the rest of him was shivery. 

"All right, then." Frodo sounded sad again, underneath a false cheeriness. "I'll fetch her for you, shall I?" 

When Esmeralda came, she said nothing, only stripped Merry down to his underdrawers and dressed him again in a clean shirt and trousers. Then she wrapped him up in his favorite old tatty blanket, the one he'd loved since he was little, and took him onto her lap, his head pillowed on the softness of her shoulder and breast, her arms around him, tight but not too tight. Merry listened to her quiet breathing, until the inside of him got quiet too. 

An oak tree stretched out its branches above them on the bank. After a while, Merry opened his eyes to watch the way the sunlight flickered through the gold and scarlet and crimson of the leaves over his head. The day was warm, for almost-autumn, and the wind smelled faintly of spices and woodsmoke. 

"I knew you hadn't understood," Esme said at last. "Did you think Frodo was just going for a visit, love?" 

Merry nodded, but that made his head dizzy again. He shut his eyes. 

"Do you know why he is going?" 

"Tell him I'll be better, mum," Merry whispered desperately, opening his eyes again and twisting in his mother's lap until he could reach up and take her face between his two small hands. "Tell him. *Please.* I won't be bad anymore." 

Esme's green eyes went all soft and far away, and her mouth looked like it couldn't decide whether to smile or to frown. "Oh, my poor little love. You want to take it all on yourself, don't you?" 

Merry started to shake again, with his stomach doing funny things and his eyes leaking. It had to be, didn't it? Why else would Frodo want to go? 

"Frodo's growing up, Merry," Esme said, stroking the damp hair from Merry's face. "It's time he had...oh, I don't know...a proper family. A proper home." 

"*We're* proper family," Merry protested. "And isn't Brandy Hall the bestest home?" 

"Yes, love," Esme answered patiently. "But when Cousin Bilbo..." 

"*We* could adopt him." Merry felt amazed that no one had thought of this wonderful solution earlier. "We're a mum and a dad and a...a...little brother. What could be better than that?" 

"But think of Cousin Bilbo, love. Think how lonely he'd be!" 

"Did Frodo think how lonely *I'd* be?" Merry responded. Ha! He had her there. 

"Frodo thought of that, lad." Saradoc squatted down beside them, his hand firm around Merry's arm. "The Family won't...that is, we aren't allowed... We can't adopt your cousin, son, and that's that. No more about it, if you please." 

Merry gaped at his father, stunned. Saradoc's face was all sadness and sternness mixed up together, and his eyes had *that* look, like ice on the river on a winter's day. 

"It has been decided," Saradoc continued. "Frodo's going to Bilbo, and that's all there is." He rose abruptly, turning away. 

"Sar, don't you think...?" Esme began, but stopped at that. 

Merry's mouth hung open again. His dad was angry, but at whom? At him, for making such a fuss? At his mum? At Frodo? 

He didn't want his father to be angry at mum or Frodo. If he'd made Saradoc angry, then his dad was most likely right to be so, since he was the wisest of all Hobbits, ever--though Merry still couldn't understand exactly what it was he'd said or done. 

"We'd best be on our way," Saradoc continued, in a milder tone, turning round again. "Else we won't reach Frogmorton by dusk. Come along, Merry." He reached down a hand and Merry took it, hardly daring to do otherwise. He'd never seen his father truly angry before, but Saradoc's fingers, curled over his own, were tender and warm as they'd always been. He didn't want to let go when his dad boosted him into the cart again. 

The space behind the box remained damp where it had been scrubbed out, and underneath the odor of soap, still smelled faintly of sick. Merry found he'd rather not sit apart from Frodo, but preferred not to be too close to him either, and so they perched as stiffly as two young Hobbits can, Frodo gazing off into the far distance and Merry holding poor old Rags in a stranglehold, glaring down at the top of the stuffed rabbit's blue cotton head. 

He bit his bottom lip hard, refusing to let his brain think any thoughts at all. 

To be continued... 


	4. Missing, Part Two

Disclaimer: Nearly all of these characters were created by Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, whom I greatly esteem. No disrespect whatsoever is intended to Prof. Tolkien in anything I may write, and I make no profit from any of these stories. 

Many thanks to those who've left reviews. You inspire me! 

Chapter Three - An Interruption, Continued 

Brandy Hall, SR 1484 

If nothing else, Sariadoc's children will sleep well tonight, for I can proudly state that I managed to run them literally ragged. Not bad, I can't help but think, for an old Hobbit of ninety-four. Their mother, Posy (a distant connection of mine, being a granddaughter of Adelard Took, who was a great-grandson of the Old Took, rather than just a great-great, like myself) came upon us whilst we were enjoying a spirited game of Duck, Duck, Goose and treated me to a rather curious expression--I'm not certain whether she thought I'd fallen headlong into my dotage, or if my behavior stood contrary to everything she expects of a Thain. 

Though, when I come to think of it, she may only have wondered how on earth she'd to find time to scrub and bandage and mend the clothes of five such unruly little goblins as Merry's grandbairns, and how many other times she might *have* to do so before they come of age. Three lads and two lasses, there are, and each of them more lively and inquisitive and mischief-making than the last, each with a halo of honey-colored curls, those mismatched but nonetheless thoroughly appealing Brandybuck features and the wide, color-changing eyes that never seem to miss anything. Better proof was never seen than those children of apples not falling far from trees. If poor Posy weren't a Took, I doubt she'd survive their youth, and even though dear Sariadoc's a Brandybuck through and through, he seems, at times, a bit perplexed by the riot that reigns within his home. But then, he never knew his father as a lad. 

I'm smiling as I write this, not only from the pleasure of my splendid afternoon with those lovely, lively young Hobbits (which has quite chased my doldrums away), but because a memory's surfaced, just now, of one night on our great journey. We cousins had been arguing, in our own friendly fashion, about the ways in which we were related to one another, all the firsts and seconds and thirds and removeds--a favorite topic of all Hobbits. I can't recall now how Gimli found himself involved, because if there's anything bound to bewilder someone who's *not* a Hobbit, it's our geneology (or, perhaps, our politics). Gimli would have been far better advised to back off quickly, and leave the subject alone, especially since dwarves seem to take such concerns terribly seriously (as they do many other things), and also to find our degree of inter-marriage somewhat shocking. The discussion got quite heated on poor Gimli's part, what with Frodo's patient but nonetheless incomprehensible explanations and Merry's sly delivery of exactly the sort of convoluted facts that make sense to no one *but* ourselves. Frodo's patience, of course, was genuine, but Merry approached it all with a totally feigned air of solemn studiousness that would have done his old schoolmaster proud, while I nearly laughed myself sick. I'm afraid my wicked cousin brought the unfortunate dwarf very near the point of pulling out his own beloved beard. 

Here's something I've often wondered: *do*Dwarf women really have beards, or was Strider only joking? I suppose he might have been, though for all his inestimable qualities, our king isn't really the sort for much jollity, which I take to be the result of being brought up by Elves. Not that Elves can't be fine fellows as well. They're just...Elves. Which is to say, for example, that Legolas is a dear chap, but were he suddenly to sit down beside me in The Green Dragon and order a pint and a fill of his pipe, I'd most likely fall straight off my stool from the shock of it. 

Oh, I'm making no sense. The truth of it is, I'm missing Merry, for tea-time's long since come and gone, and suppertime too, but he's still not back at home. It's silly, I know, but I worry for him, and if I didn't know that to do so would be utterly foolish, I'd saddle my pony and go out for a look--though I'd most likely just end up falling in the river in the dark, and Mer would have to rescue me, for he's a far finer swimmer than I. I, on the other hand, have a better head for heights.. 

Amazing how quiet Brandy Hall goes at night, although somewhere in the distance I faintly hear some very young Hobbit's cries. Angry cries, too--in a Hobbit-bairn sort of way. My wee Faramir was the same as a lad: however tired got, he *never* wished to bid the world goodnight, a quality he most likely gets from me: one more pint, one more pipe, one more song, and only then to bed. 

And there, suddenly, not far away, at all is the sound of a door opening, and the whisper of Hobbit feet on the flagstoned floor of the corridor. There's my Merry, home at last. 

I'd left the study door open a crack, so he'd see the light. Most likely my cousin knows it's me, even though I wasn't expected. I'm equally sure he'll come into the room--which of course he does, with a smile and an, "Evenin', Pip. Have a good ride over?" 

Merry looks tired, I think. Thinner than a prosperous old Hobbit should be, and a bit shadowy round the eyes. 

"Not bad, " I answer. "I've been waiting awhile. Had some grand games with the lads and lasses." 

"Pip," Merry says, sinking into his chair by the hearth, "You're too old to be playing games." 

"Or maybe I'm *not* old because I do," I respond. 

"'The closer we are to danger, the further we are from harm.'" Merry laughs suddenly, quoting an old piece of my nonsense. 

In my own foolish way, I'm good for my Merry, I think. At least, I hope that I am. 

"Hope you are what, Pip?" Merry asks, perplexed. I'd no idea I'd spoken that last bit aloud. 

"Good for you," I answer feeling, suddenly and oddly, the slightest bit shy with this cousin I know and love better than anyone in the whole of Middle-earth. I take a seat perched on the footstool, as I often do, looking up into his eyes. "I *am* good for you, aren't I, Merry?" 

"Do you really need to ask that, Peregrin?" Merry answers. He reaches out to ruffle my hair, fondly, just as he's done since I was a little lad. It's his left hand that reaches, I notice, so I touch my fingertips to the right. It's cold. Icy cold. 

Merry's hidden it well for years, trained himself to use his left hand nearly as well as he ever did the right--half the Hobbits who know Merry believe him to be left-handed, a trait even more rare with us than it is amongst the Big Folk. The truth is, that his poor hand has never properly mended, not since that day on Pelennor Fields. It often goes quite cold when Merry's tired or unwell or sorrowing, and sometimes pains him badly besides. 

The Valar know I don't mean to speak ill of poor old Frodo, or take away from his courage, his pain and or his sacrifice, but I sometimes wonder if our elder cousin quite that understood others suffered as well. That others muddled through pain and horrible dreams and the sense that they'd been cut loose altogether from their proper lives. 

I loved Frodo dearly. I did, and I do. I've truly missed him every day since he left us. And the day I saw him alive in Ithilien, and brave Sam, too, was one of the happiest I've ever known. 

I've also asked myself a question, though, that Sam and Merry never would: was Frodo so wounded in his body and spirit because of a Morgul blade, and a monster's venom and the terrible journey across Mordor to Mount Doom...? 

Or did he suffer so because in the end, unlike Bilbo--and unlike Sam, too, the truest of hearts, whom that evil ring must have found quite perplexing indeed--Frodo *didn't* give up the ring willingly. He kept it, and he claimed it, and we're only alive today because a monster tore it from his hand. 

But who am I, after all, to question anything? I couldn't even resist the Palantir, and *that* day I remember as the worst of my life, worse than Boromir's death, or our capture by Orcs or Lord Denethor's blazing pyre. It isn't so horrible, either, because of the burning, or seeing that terrible eye in the glass, hearing the dreadful voice in my head. 

No, that day was the worst because it marked the one time in my life my Merry turned away from me, and *I*caused it. I parted us. And if I'd never found him again alive, I wouldn't have cared if that troll squashed me absolutely to jelly (instead of merely part-way), because I'd have destroyed the better part of what gives meaning to my foolish Hobbit life, 

Merry's giving me his questioning look, biting one side of his lip, with his brows raised high, so . I shake my head, rattling the cobwebs away. 

"It's nothing. Too many thoughts," I say. 

He makes an effort to wrap those cold, stiff fingers round my warm ones. "You are not only good for me, Pip, you are the best of cousins, and the best of friends." He gives my hand a bit of a shake. "How many times *do* I have to tell you?" 

"Well," I answer, giving him my cheekiest grin, "I *always* like to hear it, Mer." I kick back my footstool, hauling my cousin to his feet. 

"You've kept us up too late for two old Hobbits," I say, giving him a little shove toward the door. "Go to bed!" 

"Gladly," Merry sighs, so I know he's tired through-and-through, and glad not to have to be hospitable, even with me. He pauses in the door, though, watching me, that familiar crooked smile playing over his mouth. "I'm glad you're here tonight," he tells me. "Goodnight, my Pip." 

The door closes softly behind him, but I still murmur to it, "Goodnight, my Mer." 

* * * 

MISSING, PART TWO 

The Village of Frogmorton, SR 1389 

Merry had always enjoyed coming to the village of Frogmorton, where the family often broke their journey on the way to Hobbiton. It was their custom, as with most Brandybucks, to stay at The Red Swan, as the landlord's wife there had been born a Bucklander. Much of Merry's enjoyment came from the novelty of sleeping not in a snug hole in the earth, like a proper Hobbit, or even a neat little house above ground, but in a building that actually rose to two whole storeys, one above the other. Though he wasn't particularly fond of heights, he loved the delightfully dangerous sensation of going to bed so high up in the air. 

The family always took the same rooms on their visits, two chambers at the very top of the stair: one large, with a single big bed for Saradoc and Esme, the other smaller, with two narrow beds side-by-side for the lads. 

In the past, Merry had loved the ritual of stopping for the night: his father's strong hands lifting him down from whatever cart or carriage they'd used for their travels; a quick dash upstairs to throw his little bag onto the bed; down again for a quick peek round the public room, a word with the landlady and a moment to pester the Inn's large ginger tomcat, then a second dash out to the stables, where Saradoc would be seeing their ponies settled for the night. 

Merry always stopped just inside the stable doors, breathing in the lovely smells of leather, ponies and hay. He was fond of all animals in general, but horses and ponies in particular, and it was his great delight to help his father with the easier buckles and lighter bits of harness, then to brush all the parts of the sturdy little beasts he could reach until they shone like satin; finally to measure out their oats, and see to their hay and water. 

On this night, however, Merry dropped more than climbed down from the cart, all on his own, the moment they reached The Swan. Once inside, he neglected to look round for strange and interesting Hobbits from foreign parts of the Shire, or even to drag the justly reluctant Tom from under the leather armchair where it had hidden itself. Instead, he waited quietly beside his father while Saradoc made arrangements for their rooms and supper, then dragged himself up the long, steep stair. 

His body felt worn-out and weighty, not at all its usual buoyant self. After being sick that morning, he hadn't wanted any luncheon or tea, and now all he wished to do was curl up on the little bed he knew would be waiting for him, and close his eyes. All day the inside of his head had buzzed with thoughts, but now it felt as empty and echoing as Frodo's old room. 

"Ah, the poor little lad--is he ailing?" the landlady cooed, in a voice both kind and inquisitive. Merry passed upward, hearing ask behind him, "Cousin Saradoc, do you think Merry might actually be ill, and not just upset?" 

"I expect he just needs a bit of rest and quiet by himself, lad," Saradoc answered. "Merry will come out of this again by suppertime, I warrant." 

His mother said something else, but Merry had reached the door by then, and couldn't make out her words. He let himself into the small room quietly, shut the door without a sound, then flung himself down, still fully clothed, atop the coverlet, dropping almost at once into a restless slumber. 

He dreamed of running and running through the corridors of Brandy Hall--Merry knew he was home, even though none of the doors looked familiar. What worried him rather more was the silence--for even late at night, the Hall should have hummed with faint, sleepy noise--and the fact that not a Hobbit, Brandybuck or otherwise, was there to be seen. He began to panic, looking for someone, anyone to keep him company, moving faster and faster until the tunnels blurred from clean, comfortable Hobbit delvings into dank, dark twists filled with the smell of old, bad fish. 

Merry stopped. Listened. Watched. His heart rattled inside his chest like a marble in a jar. 

Something flitted across the edges of his sight, Hobbit-sized and roughly Hobbit-shaped, though it scurried and skulked in a way that sent shivers up Merry's spine. 

He knew, then, what the thing must be: the Gollum-creature, from Cousin Bilbo's tale, come to lure some unsuspecting lad down into the deepest dark, ask him complicated riddles and, finally, eat him alive. 

Merry squared his shoulders and whirled round, raising his fists to defend himself. He didn't mean to be eaten, not if he could possibly help it. 

But before he knew what had happened, the scuttling thing bowled into him, knocking him flat and breathless, and Merry, to his astonishment, found himself staring up into the face, not of Gollum, but of his Cousin Berilac. Except Berilac, normally a sturdy, ruddy-faced lad of almost ten, had gone scrawny, bluish-pale, with clammy skin and great, staring eyes. 

Shocked beyond belief, Merry screamed, struggling with every fiber of strength he possessed to make his escape. Berilac, bigger and heavier, held him fast with one hand, while his other raised a shapeless thing that wriggled and dripped. As Merry screamed again, this wraith-cousin pushed the horrid thing into his mouth, forcing his jaw shut until he choked on the foulness struggling inside him and couldn't cry out any more. 

"Merry! Merry!" someone called, a sweet, familiar voice, though it seemed to come from quite a long way away. 

Moaning, Merry forced his eyes to open. The nastiness hadn't left his mouth--if anything, it seemed worse, chokingly strong. His sheets were soaked and twisted around him. He began to cry both from the fear and the sheer misery of it all. 

"My poor little Hobbit," Frodo said to him kindly. "You certainly aren't yourself today, are you?" 

For a moment, Merry feared he'd changed too, like Berilac, but of course Frodo hadn't meant that at all. He didn't even bristle at being called little: he *felt* small, shrunken down to a tiny ball of discomfort and sadness, his heart still racing from the awful dream. 

"Let's clean you up, shall we?" Frodo said cheerfully, unwinding the top sheet from Merry's legs. 

To his shame, Merry realized he'd been sick again, though he'd no idea how--his stomach had to be emptier than empty. "Don't tell Dad," he pleaded weakly. "Promise?" 

Frodo had bent down to pick Merry up in his arms, but he paused, frowning, "Whyever not, silly lad?" 

Merry pulled his knees up to his chest, resting his forehead upon them so that the room wouldn't spin. He searched through all the words he knew, trying to find ones that could express what he'd understood. 

Frodo did pick him up then, moving Merry to the armchair by the fire in order to divest him of the spoilt clothes he'd fallen asleep in. After, he popped Merry into a fresh nightshirt, then carried him to the clean bed near the door while he dealt with the unpleasantness. 

When Frodo came back, he smelled nicely of soap, and he'd brought Merry a cup of water to wash the bad taste way. 

"Now lie down, dearest," Frodo commanded, as he set the half-emptied cup on the table. 

Merry complied gladly; his head swam alarmingly. "'m not sulking," he told his cousin in a funny, scratchy voice." 

"I know, my dear." Frodo stroked the Merry's sweaty curls back from his face, his touch cool and soothing against the younger Hobbit's flushed skin. "You're ill. Everyone understands that now." 

Merry wanted to close his eyes and melt into the caress, but wouldn't allow himself to do so. Frodo had to know. He *had* to understand. 

"*Not* sulking," he insisted. "Just...all jumbled up." 

"I know, Mer," Frodo sighed. "But, honestly, I'd thought you'd understood what was happening, that I was going to Bilbo. I never meant it all to fall on you like this." 

Merry's eyes prickled; he blinked them fiercely. "*Why?*" he pleaded, groping for his cousin's hand. "Did mum tell you I'll be good now? I promised. I'll be good. You don't have to go." 

"Ssh, Merry. Is that what you thought? My dear, silly lad, I love you more than any Hobbit alive. I honestly do. And that I promise *you*." Frodo straightened, giving Merry's hand a final pat before he crossed to the wardrobe to find his own nightshirt. He dressed quickly. 

"Scoot over," he ordered, when he returned. "Just because you're ill, doesn't mean you get to hog the entire bed." 

Merry scooted. Frodo slipped in behind him, wrapping his young cousin in his arms, and Merry turned to face him, snuggling close--he felt cold now, and Frodo was warm. 

"You're burning," the older lad murmured, "Like a little furnace. Why didn't you say you weren't feeling well, Mer, before we set off? You could be home snug in your own bed just now, with half the aunties in Brandy Hall fussing over you." 

"Don't want aunties," Merry informed him, sleepy again in a heavy, uncomfortable way. "Or fussing. Just Frodo." 

"Oh, Merry," his cousin sighed. "How I *do* wish I could be in two places at one time, with no one else to tell me how things must be." 

Merry dreamed a whole series of funny dreams, though none terrified him like the one with the Gollum-Berilac. A few times he thought he felt sun on his face, other times that he heard the clop of ponies' hooves just ahead. When at last he woke up properly, he wasn't in The Red Swan at all, but in his cozy room in Brandy Hall, tucked up in his own small bed with the headboard carved like a tree, that had been Saradoc's when he was a lad. 

His first thought was that he needed very, very badly to visit the privy, but when he slipped out of bed to go across the corridor, his legs folded up, depositing him quite suddenly onto the floor. 

"Ooh," he moaned, as the room spun round abruptly. He tried to pull himself up on the edge of the bed, but his arms seemed no more to be relied upon than his legs. If he had an accident like a baby all the other lads would know: they would tease him and call him names and... 

He would have to crawl. That was it. His room wasn't large, after all, and the corridor not particularly wide, so if he just crawled... 

This time he fell upon his face, biting his tongue badly. 

Luckily, someone heard the noise of his falling--his Uncle Mac, a kind and good-natured Hobbit despite having the misfortune to be Berilac's dad. 

"Merry-my-lad!" he exclaimed. "I don't believe your mum would want you out of bed." 

"Uncle Mac," Merry whispered. His bitten tongue burned, and his need was becoming desperate. 

Merimac looked closer at his nephew's stricken expression, scooped him up and draped Merry over one shoulder. "Well, if that's how it is, let your old uncle give you a ride. Can you manage things from there?" 

"Yes," Merry replied shortly. He still had some pride, after all--though he was grateful to discover Uncle Mac still waiting outside when he was through, ready to convey him back to his room. He even let his uncle tuck him into bed again without protesting that it was daytime, and he didn't want to sleep, he wanted to play. 

The thing was, he did want to sleep, or at least to lie quietly, without moving, which wasn't like him at all. Normally he was one of those young Hobbits who kept in motion from the moment he opened his eyes at daybreak to the moment he shut them (reluctantly) at night. Now, though, all that had occurred was coming back to him, and suddenly he didn't want to talk to Uncle Mac anymore, or even look at his uncle. 

Merry's mind had begun to worry away at a question: what had Saradoc meant, when he said the family *wouldn't*...wouldn't what? Frodo wasn't well understood by their relations, but he was a pleasant and well-behaved lad, and most of their kin liked him for that, even Grandfather Rory, who rightly thought Frodo a clever young Hobbit, in the best way, and bound to go far. 

Merry turned his eyes to his large round window. A grove of trees stood just beyond, that one particularly large beech Berilac had once dared him to climb at their center. Merry hadn't wanted to climb, but did anyway. He'd almost fallen out when Berilac shook the branch he was standing on, but didn't, so that was all right. Most of the beech's leaves, Merry noticed, had dropped off and been raked into piles, along with all the leaves of its neighbors. When had that happened? There'd still been green leaves on the branches last time he went by. 

Uncle Mac followed Merry's gaze. "Look at those, lad! Perfect piles! I expect you can't wait to get out and have a good jump-and-tumble through those." 

"Yes, Uncle," Merry replied dutifully, shutting his eyes.. 

After a little while, Merimac left him alone. 

Later, Berilac slouched through the door. "Hoy, Frog-face," he said, but without the tone that usually warned Merry of coming mischief. 

Merry turned his eyes to the window once more. A few leaves still drifted downward from the fullest of the maples, slow bits of flame. 

"The grown-ups thought you'd die," his cousin informed him. "*I* thought that might be interesting." He stepped closer to punch Merry's shoulder, though not hard enough to make Merry flinch. 

"I *hate* you," Merry told him, in a soft, hoarse voice. "You should have gone away, not Frodo." 

Berilac's face took on a weird, crumple-y look, like parchment that's been crushed into a tight ball, then smoothed out again. To see that sort of change come over Berilac made Merry uncomfortable. He'd meant the words, he supposed, but to say them outright had been mean, and he'd been raised to avoid unkindness at all times. He would be Master of the Hall one day, and Saradoc had taught him that a Master must be both fair in his acts and fair in his speech. 

"You know why Frodo went away, don't you?" Berilac taunted. 

Merry shook his head. 

"He couldn't stand having a little toad like you tag after him all the time." Berilac's voice had gone beyond teasing into something sharp and dangerous, like a handful of broken glass. "He had to move all the way to Hobbiton to get away from *you*." 

"No he didn't," Merry murmured, though in his heart he feared Berilac's words might be true, despite what Frodo told him at The Red Swan. Frodo was a big lad, as his mum had said, nearly halfway grown, and interested in the sorts of things big lads liked. And what was he? Little and annoying, like an awkwardly-shaped parcel one couldn't set down, no matter how one wanted to. 

He'd thought, just for a moment, of calling out for Frodo when he first awakened. Now Merry knew for certain it would be no use. Frodo wasn't there. He wouldn't come. 

Merry held back a sob. Frodo hadn't even said goodbye. 

He lay very still, too weak and ill to do otherwise. Tears leaked out of him, right there for Berilac to see and mock, running down his face to pool beneath his jaw and soak the edges of the covers. 

Frodo was gone. He was gone. And wasn't ever, ever coming back again. 

"Merry, I say--!" Berilac's voice sounded strange, with a tone Merry had never heard before. "I say, don't cry like that! You'll make yourself worse again." He took two steps forward, one back, then came all the way to the bed in a rush. Merry huddled into himself, expecting a thump or a pinch or a twist of something that would hurt, but Berilac only fished a grubby handkerchief from his trouser-pocket and used it to scrub the damp from Merry's cheeks. 

"I'd have missed you, Frog-face," he mumbled gruffly, and then was gone, racing from Merry's room as if Grip and Fang and all the Maggot dogs were on his heels. 

Merry turned his wet, hot face into the pillow, not certain, precisely, what had just happened. 


	5. Missing, Part 3

The Green Book - Chapter Four 

Brandy Hall, SR 1389 

As Merry lay in his bed, his brain filled up with things too big for the thoughts of such a young Hobbit. He was just learning to write, in a large, shaky hand, both his first and last names (which, being quite long, were difficult, lovely fun to write) all his letters, and a few other words. Merry liked to take the words he knew and make lists, with numbers before them, of things he wanted to do in the day. A typical list would be: 

Meriadoc Brandybuck's List 

1. HUG MUM 

2. HUG FRODO 

3. HUG DAD 

4. WARE BLU SHIRT 

5. EAT PORRIG 

6. PLAY 

7. EAT APLES 

8. GIVE CAROT TO PONY 

9. NO SPROUTS!!! 

10. PLAY IN BATH 

11. HAVE STORY 

12. GOOD DREAMS 

Merry felt very proud of his lists. He liked to consult them several times each day, crossing off items as he accomplished them. If anything stood in the way of their completion, he tended to become cross--the prohibition against sprouts being a particular hurdle, as Grandmother Menegilda believed firmly that sprouts were essential to a young Hobbit's growth. 

As she liked to say, "When I was a lass, we *ate* our sprouts! Did we like them? No! But we ate them and were grateful." 

Sometimes Berilac would mutter, "I wish you'd eat them now." When he did that, Merry would have to cover up his mouth with his hands so that Grandmother wouldn't see his laugh. She tended to watch him closest of all the cousins, though Merry couldn't understand why. Perhaps she just didn't like him. 

This day, empty and ill, Merry made up a different list, one inscribed only in his head, not to be revealed. 

1. Ask Grandfather why Frodo went away. 

2. Find Frodo. 

3. Say a proper goodbye. 

He shut his eyes to seal the list behind them. 

Presently Merry's mother came along to his room, bearing his favorite cup with the ponies round the sides. Her petticoats rustled as she settled beside him on the bed, slipping her arm beneath Merry's shoulders and lifting him so he could drink. Merry managed a few sips of something comfortingly warm, sweet and salty at the same time. 

"There you are, my little lad," she said, laying him down again and setting the cup on his night table. "How do you feel, my Merry?" 

"Fine," he said. "I want to get up." 

Esmeralda ignored that. "Some of the other children are ill as well, though none so badly as you, poor dear. And you usually such a strong lad. Pansy Wooten brought me news that many little ones have been poorly over by Rushy. The little ones and the old ones, they say." Her gentle hand brushed back his unruly hair, lingering in Merry's curls. "You worried your mum terribly, Merry dear. What would I have done without my little lad?" 

Merry couldn't imagine an answer to that question. His mum's life before his began was not a concept his mind could catch hold of, though he knew there'd been a time when he was not. The idea upset him terribly, and he flung his arms around Esme's waist, pressing his face into the softness of her stomach. Her arms enclosed him in turn, and Merry's head rested against her bosom, then, in absolute comfort and peace. 

Merry fell asleep again briefly, lulled by the warm drink in his stomach and his mother's warmer touch. But when he woke again soon after and found her gone, Merry decided to take matters into his own hands. By the way the sun slanted down through the trees, it seemed close to the time when Grandfather Rory liked to sit alone in the Master's Study, smoking a quiet pipe. Merry had learned *that* time was either the best or the worst time to approach his grandfather, who sometimes seemed as fond of his privacy as his wife was of sprouts. 

Merry slipped out of his small bed and was pleased to find that he could stand fairly easily. He was so rarely ill that he could scarcely comprehend a sickness lingering, and it made him happy that his legs felt like legs again. 

Encouraged, he tottered round to his small wardrobe and dug through the drawers at the bottom until he found his favorite blue shirt that Auntie Egg had made him, his yellow waistcoat and his trousers. Grandfather always liked Merry to dress properly. He said no future Master of Buckland should dress like a ruffian, and he always chided Merry when he caught him with his face and hands dirty, or tangles in his curls. Because of this, Merry washed and dressed carefully, and even used the special small brush on his foot fur. 

Afterwards, he felt very tired, but pleased with himself, and moving slowly (but cautiously, so as to avoid adult eyes) he made his way along the long corridor to his grandfather's study. 

The carved door was shut tight, but Merry carefully lifted the latch, slipping through the narrowest of cracks. His small feet made no sound whatsoever on the tiled floor, and he stalked his grandfather as he might have stalked a nesting goose by the riverbank, never letting himself be seen until he meant to. 

Rory sat at his ease in the leather armchair by the fire, his large feet propped up on a footstool, a tankard of ale close to hand, puffing contentedly on his long-stemmed pipe (given to him by real dwarves!) and blowing smoke rings. His hair was thick, curly and grey as wire, and his eyes glinted like mirrors beneath their bristling brows. Grandfather Rory was, without a doubt, the most terrifying Hobbit he had ever met, but Merry took that as a point of pride. 

He came up quite close to Old Rory's chair, standing so still that some moments passed before his grandfather heeded his presence. When he did, the master of Buckland gave out a gigantic grunting snort, nearly dropping his pipe on the hearthrug. "Good stars above, Master Meriadoc! How long have you stood there?" 

"Quite long," Merry told him. 

The Master's eyes glinted with something that might well have been amusement. "Well done, my lad! And here, I never thought I'd find the Hobbit who could get the drop on Old Rory." He bent close, keen eyes peering deeply into Merry's face, wearing an expression Merry could not interpret--though, when his father's face looked like that, it meant he was thinking how much he loved him. At those times, his hand would hover over Merry's curls, then touch, stroking, so that Merry felt he must stay very still, lest the moment be lost to him forever. 

His grandfather gave him the same touch, and again Merry held himself silent--both for that reason and because he knew, somehow, it was one he would want to cherish. "They told me..." his grandfather said, then cleared his throat with an alarming wrong. "Well, that's that. They told me wrong, and that's all I'll say on the subject." Still, his gnarled, rough fingers trailed down the soft curve of Merry's cheek, and he muttered to himself, "What a likely little lad. What would I have done without you?" He patted his footstool suddenly. "Sit down, Meriadoc. You're looking pale and peaky. Eat your good vittles and romp in the fresh air, that will set you on your feet again." 

"Yes, sir," Merry answered, attempting to hop up as his grandfather bade him, but his legs were still too weak to achieve such a height, and he slid down the slippery leather. 

To his surprise, Rory lifted him gently. "There now, lad, you'll soon be strong again." 

"Yes, Grandfather," Merry answered. 

"I was told you'd not be up and about for a week." Rory snorted loudly. "Shows what these healers know." 

Merry's muscles had started to tremble and he couldn't help but think fondly of his cozy bed--yet he didn't say anything. 

"Well?" Rory demanded. 

Grandfather liked Hobbits who sat up tall and looked him straight in the eye, so that is what Merry did. "Grandfather," he said, "I want to know why my Frodo's gone away." He looked up at Rory pleadingly. "I miss him ever so much," he confessed. 

"Frodo? This would be Frodo Baggins. Primula's lad." 

"Yes, sir," Merry answered, clasping his small hands. 

"The one who's gone to Bilbo at Bag end. Hrmph." He sat back in his chair, frowning at his youngest grandson. "He's gone because he's a Baggins, Bilbo needs an heir and Frodo has no parents. Besides which, I believe Bilbo's quite fond of the lad." 

Merry frowned back, considering. As far as that went, it made sense. Bilbo gave wonderful presents and told marvelous tales and Bag End was a lovely hole and very nice to visit. 

"Does that make sense to you, young Meriadoc?" 

"Yes, grandfather," Merry replied, his clasped hands rising to the middle of his chest, twisting together as he tried to come up with the words to say. "Only Frodo *has* a family. He has mummy and dad and me, and I miss him so." 

For a moment, the harsh lines of Rory's face softened. "Lad," he said quietly, "In this life all of us must suffer many partings." 

"Not Frodo!" Merry cried. "Never Frodo!" 

"Yes!" Rory surged to his feet, brows bristling, eyes full of storms. He startled his grandson so badly Merry nearly tumbled off the stool. 

"As long as there has been a Buckland," he thundered, "The Master has been the first son of a first son. I will not break that line, or allow your father to do so by putting some Hobbiton Baggins in your place. My successors will be a son and a grandson of my own blood! I did this for *you*, Meriadoc!" 

Merry held quite still, not frightened, despite his grandfather's rage. He was too young to understand entirely his grandfather's words, and yet he *did* understand them, and the knowledge broke and changed something inside him. He slipped down from the stool. 

"Only you were born to be Master after your father," said Rory in a softer tone. "If you had not been born, he would have been required to set aside your mother, whatever love lay between them, in favor of a lass who could bear him a living child. These are the sacrifices we make for the family. Do you understand this, Meriadoc?" 

Merry regarded him, cool blue Brandybuck eyes meeting Brandybuck eyes. 

"Yes, " said Merry, "I understand." But inside his mind he whispered, *I understand where Berilac gets his bullying, because you are a bully. I understand that I will never forgive you.* His chest ached round the wound in his heart. "Thank you, Grandfather," he said softly. 

Rory tousled his curls. "And no tears, either! There's a good lad." 

Merry gave the little bow that one was meant to give the Master when taking leave. 

Silent, thoughtful, aching, he walked out of the study, trying to decide what hurt him most. 

He thought it might be that he still loved his grandfather. 

* * * 

Merry did not want any supper that night, but he went to the Great Dining Room along with his aunts and uncles (great or otherwise), his parents and grandparents, his cousins. He sat in his own seat, on the little stand that raised him to the height of the table, ate one bite of everything set before him, and all of it tasted of mud, sand and sickness. 

The family exclaimed over him, made much of him. Merry gave a version of the smile that had earned him his nickname, suffered to have his curls ruffled, endured the warm embraces of his aunts and older cousins. 

"He still looks peaky," Cousin Hilda whispered to Cousin Peony, and Great-Aunt Amaranth asked his mum, "Ought young Merry to be up and about yet?" Merry noticed that the cousins closest to his age, Merimas, Mentha and little Melitot, did not come to supper. 

After supper his mum took Merry by the hand and led him to his room. In a little wheeled tub set before the fire, she bathed him and washed his hair, then dried him off gently. After dressing him in a fresh nightshirt that smelled of rain water and sunlight, she took him into her lap in the rocking chair, the two of them rocking together, flickering light warm on their faces, his mum singing all the songs he'd loved so much when he was an even smaller lad. Merry pressed his ear to her chest, loving the soft thrum of her ribs as she sang. 

At length, Esme fell silent. Merry almost thought he could hear her think. 

"Did your grandfather explain?" she asked at last. Merry nodded against her. She fell silent for a time, her hand stroking gently up and down the length of Merry's arm. "We Tooks see things so differently," she said. "Did you know Cousin Ferumbas has named your Uncle Dinny as his heir? If the new baby's a lad, that is." 

"I hope he is," Merry murmured. 

"'*He*' is it?" Esme laughed. "You seem very certain, my Merry." 

"I am certain," Merry told her. "He kicked so hard." He'd had the shock of his life, leaning his cheek against Auntie Egg's rounded belly to see if he could hear anything, and receiving that sudden swift blow. "But Vinca kicks hard too." 

"And bites." Esme smiled down into Merry's face. "Like some other wee Hobbits we might name. We must see that poor Rags receives a new eye." 

"He'd like that," Merry said. "He finds it hard to get safe into his warren with only one. A hawk might eat him!" 

"A very good point," his mum answered seriously. "I shall certainly need to rummage through my button bag tonight. Rags must remain safe at all costs." 

"You mustn't worry or be afraid," Merry told her suddenly, the closest he could come to admitting his plans. 

"Oh, my Merry," Esme sighed, "You are my sunrise and my moonrise, how could I not worry?" 

"Because you know I'm safe," Merry answered. He stroked her hand a bit, then raised it to his lips and kissed her dimpled knuckles. 

"What a funny lad you are tonight!" Esme laughed. Then, even though he was too big, lifted him in her arms and whisked him into bed. 

Merry felt so secure and so loved there, once his mum had tucked him in and kissed his brow, that the thought of rising again seemed impossible. Yet he waited until Esme had gone and Brandy Hall quieted with sleep before he rose, careful to make no sound at all, drew out his rucksack from the bottom of his wardrobe and began to pack. 

That accomplished, Merry dressed in his warmest clothes, caught his cloak down from the peg and padded down the corridor to raid the pantry. He took a small loaf of bread, a little cheese, four apples and a paring knife to cut things with, even though he wasn't allowed to touch knives. 

Thus provisioned, he dragged up a stool to climb on, the only way he could reach the bolt of the kitchen door. The old ironware was stiff and he had to struggle with both hands, wrapping a corner of his cloak round the knob in order to work the slide. The lock gave way suddenly, spilling Merry to the floor, and the impact of his head against a leg of the kitchen table sent fireworks whirling across his eyes. He crouched for several minutes in the shadows beneath the table, waiting for one of the cooks or scullions, alerted by the noise, to burst in and discover him, but no one came. 

Merry crept out again, restored the stool to its proper place and slipped out into the night, shutting the large door quietly as he could behind him. It gave him a pang to leave his home so unguarded--in Buckland, unlike the rest of the Shire, one did not leave doors unlocked after nightfall--but it wasn't to be helped. He asked the Valar (whom he pictured as a group of very wise grandmother and grandfather Hobbits in long white nightshirts) silently to look after his family. 

Merry crept between the rows of herbs and vegetables in the kitchen garden, certain at any moment to be discovered. His feet walked in shadow but a large, round moon shone overhead and stars glinted in the velvety sky like bits of broken glass. Merry's breath steamed in the air and he shivered a little despite his warm clothing. He hadn't thought how cold it might be. 

For a moment he almost abandoned his plan, almost turned round and scampered back to his inviting bed. 

Instead, thinking of Frodo, he squared his small shoulders and marched out through the yard. 

His first obstacle would be the river. Merry knew he could never walk all the way to the Brandywine Bridge this night, and he'd be caught trying to cross by daylight. Neither could he pole the Bucklebury Ferry across the River--he simply hadn't the strength. 

The older boys kept coracles on the mill pond, though, small, round crafts made of hides stretched over wooden frames. He'd often played in those little boats, coming home damp, tired and happy after a day of splashing and racing on the still pond. Merry trotted there now, thinking that, with some effort, he might well be able to drag one of the light crafts down to the Brandywine. 

Merry picked the smallest and balanced it on his back, the paddle tucked under one arm. Like a small, determined turtle he made his way to the water, stopping often to rest his rubbery legs. 

A Brandybuck through and through, he'd learned to swim before he could walk and had no fear of water. He also possessed an affinity for watercraft, and was able to float his coracle easily enough. He'd picked for his launch a little pocket in the bank, where the river moved particularly slowly, and he was good with a paddle and with centering his weight so as not to swamp the little boat. 

What Merry hadn't counted on was how buoyant a coracle occupied by only one small Hobbit could be, and how swiftly the river could carry it--far beyond his power to control. He managed to keep his head and not panic, but it did frighten him rather to see how the banks swept by, the country he knew soon replaced by foreign soil. 

He finally came to ground at a place where the river began to broaden and grow marshy, forcing his boat through the thickened water until he could propel it no further and he was forced to abandon ship. Merry moved cautiously then, carrying his paddle, poking its point into the swampy ground before he placed his feet. He'd once seen a pony run afoul of such dangerous terrain, and how hard a great group of Hobbits had to work to get it free again, and so he worked his way through with as much patience as a young Hobbit can muster, until he came out on firmer, higher ground. 

He'd come into a tufted green land with a great many rocks poking out from the thin earth and a number of willow trees. The wind had picked up, whipping the willow-withies stingingly across Merry's face as he walked, the sharp stones bruising his feet. His foot-fur was caked with mud, as indeed were his legs, his breeches and the hem of his cloak, affording him very little warmth. The sensible thing, he knew, would be to admit he'd been wrong in leaving his home, go up to the first farmhouse or hole he saw and beg shelter, but a combination of pride, stubbornness and longing for his cousin would not allow him to do so. 

Settling his rucksack more firmly on his shoulders, Merry trudged onward, doggedly, knowing he'd already lost himself but trusting to a natural sense of direction to keep his nose pointed the right way to Hobbiton, and to Frodo. 

Eventually, the rocky, willowy land gave way to actual forest, alders, oaks, firs and a number of other trees rising thickly and darkly around him. Briars and creepers tore at Merry's legs, and the air was filled with a thousand small, suspicious noises: rustlings, creakings, scurryings. His skin crawled, and his heart beat wildly. He only wished that he could see; the sounds could not possibly be so frightening if he could only see what made them. 

Merry began to trot, wanting to leave the forest behind as soon as he possibly might, but the trees seemed to stick out their roots specifically to trip him up, and once he ran directly into a huge, rough-skinned trunk he'd been too tired and frightened to see, though it stood directly in his path. He sprawled backward, his face stinging where the bark had scraped his skin, head ringing from the impact. 

The forest floor was soft beneath him, and for a moment Merry thought of staying there, curling up in some little burrow and sleeping 'til daylight--but then a branch cracked loudly, quite near by, and he scrambled to his feet again. No, he would not stay here. He couldn't. 

His trot speeded up into a run, with arms stretched out before him, and though a part of Merry knew that wasn't sensible, that he was bound to hurt himself if he didn't keep his head, he'd grown so afraid he'd gone beyond thinking, to the place where his instincts took over. 

By the time he broke free of the forest, scratched and bruised and so winded he could hardly breathe, the sky had begun to take on a faint pinkness. Off to his left lay a grassy dirt track that led between tilled fields. He passed sugar beets, then onions, then cabbages, and finally came to a place where red wheat nearly ready for harvest swayed in ranks three times as high as his head. His legs felt ready to fold beneath him, and Merry knew he could go no further. He wriggled his way between the furrows, taking care not to damage the crop, curled into a little ball on the chilly earth, covered himself with his cloak, and slept. 

Merry woke, shivering wildly, long before it was fully light. His cloak crackled with he moved, stiff with frost, and his feet felt like small blocks of ice. He'd no way to warm himself except by moving, and so he pressed onward, curly head bent, shoulders hunched. After a bit, to cheer himself, he fetched out an apple from his pack. 

Merry meant to eat half and save the rest for second breakfast. He tended to get cross when he missed a meal, and when he'd missed two, would often become quite muddled. Young Hobbits, even more than their elders, needed to eat frequently, their small bodies, no matter how much they consumed at a go, simply incapable of storing sustenance for any length of time. He meant, too, to make the apple last, but the moment the golden juice burst upon his tongue, he knew he could not. He gnawed the apple down to stem and pips and tough, fibrous core, and when he was done thought longingly of the three that remained. 

Oh, but he was hungry! So hungry his stomach pained him. He'd walk better with a bit more food inside him, and so served himself the smallest possible piece of bread and a meager morsel of cheese, trying to make this repast last as best he could by pretending he was Little Brown Mousekin from his mum's nursery stories and taking tiny nibbles round the edges until his insubstantial breakfast had been entirely consumed. 

Merry walked and walked and walked, feeling like the only Hobbit in all the world, until he could no longer bear to be so alone. He clasped his hands together tightly, trying to make believe that it was Frodo, not his own lonely self holding so firmly to his hand. He tried to hear Frodo's voice in his head, playing a game they often played while walking, finding one thing they could see for each letter in the alphabet: 

"A is for alfalfa," Merry muttered, "B is for bumblebee, C is for corn..." And so on. It calmed him a bit, this list-making, naming the familiar comforting sights of his Shire home, but with the calm came another trouble. Walking so, without friend or companion to actually talk to, or sing with, got dull very soon. Merry half wished he'd catch sight of an adult, for that would be his cue to scamper off, secreting himself quickly and silently as only a Hobbit (particularly a young one) can--but he saw no one. He tried singing for himself all the songs he thought he knew, but wished Frodo or his mum were there, to remind him of the right words. 

When the sun rose to the middle of the sky, Merry ate another apple, and when the shadows grew long he tucked himself into the dimness beneath a hedgerow to make himself another bit of bread-and-cheese. The bread, no longer perfectly fresh when he'd taken it, had grown drier and harder during the day. It tasted like sand--but the cheese was good. 

After a short rest, Merry determined to go on. His body ached, and he felt rather light-headed, but he knew many miles lay between him and Hobbiton, and the further he was able to travel in a day, the sooner he'd see Frodo again. Though he climbed to his feet, his legs seemed to have other ideas entirely: they dumped him to the ground. and would not consent to hold him up again until he'd lain beneath the hedgerow a good, long time. 

As he lay upon the damp earth, utterly exhausted, a hedgehog came poking its pointed small face out of the row. When Merry didn't move it trundled closer, nosing round his rucksack and the remains of his meal, its sharp little tongue licking up tiny crumbs. Merry, in his loneliness, reached out to touch it, running his hand over its quills, but the hedgehog, startled, only curled itself into a ball and stayed that way, refusing to come out again. 

"I wouldn't hurt you," Merry told it. "I'm not like some of the other lads. I only wanted to see how you felt." 

The hedgehog, however, would not uncurl, and to see it so unwilling to make friends only made the young Hobbit feel lonelier than ever. He forced himself upright, and though he needed to cling onto the thorny branches of the row for quite some time, at last his legs consented to bear him. He set out into the growing dark. 

The moon rose, and the path angled steadily upward, until Merry had reached enough of a promontory that he could make out, by moonlight, the lay of the land. Below him, to his left and right, lay a pair of streams, the left-hand course wider and stronger than the right. Fairly far in the distance, also to his left, shone clustered lights that must belong to a town or village, and beyond that rose rolling green hills crowned by many trees. Merry, despite his weariness, felt somewhat cheered: those hills and trees resembled the those of the Green-Hill Country where, in the western part, his Tookish cousins lived. If he was right, and he'd actually come there, then it meant his was heading in the proper direction to reach Frodo. However, it also meant he'd need to be especially cautious: the Tooks were clever and numerous, and they spent a great deal of their time roaming their lands--much more so than other Hobbits, who tended to stay close to field and hearth. He also knew that, with their close familial ties, the Tooks might well have been alerted to look out for him, to see him safely home again, and that Merry would not allow. He *would* reach Frodo. He would. 

He hurried down from his high place and, keeping to shadows, journeyed on, determined to reach that far, green land before he halted for the night. 

To be continued...   
  



	6. Missing, Part 4

Chapter 6: Missing 

Green Hill Country - 1389 SR 

Dawn came as a lightening in the green ceiling of leaves over Merry's head, but the young Hobbit scarcely noticed. Every part of himself was given to making the air go in and out of his tired lungs, in making his aching legs climb and climb over rocky, branch-strewn ground, through creepers and underbrush and vines. Weariness overwhelmed him to the point that he scarcely noticed his small feet bleeding or the lightness in his head. He'd stopped singing hours since, or playing small games to occupy his mind and allay his fear. The only thought left to him was, *Frodo, Frodo, Frodo.* 

Now and then he felt rather than saw other Hobbits, and during those times would bury himself deeply in a thicket or hollow until the danger had passed him by. He crossed a big road just as the shadows had begun to lengthen, darting quickly as he could into the cover of trees on the far side. 

When his family came to Tuckborough to visit Merry's Took cousins, they always left Buckland with the sun at their backs, stopped to rest when it stood overhead, and traveled on again with the sun in their faces. That was what he needed to do now, Merry realized--walk with the sun in his eyes until it sank away, then try not to get turned around in the dark. He knew it would be safest to keep the road in sight, so as not to get lost, but that would also make it more likely that he'd be caught. 

Merry plunged deeper into the wood. He mustn't get caught. He mustn't. Not after coming so far. His legs protested against taking one single step more, but he would not let them stop him, even though he'd begun to lurch and stagger as he walked. His ears felt hot, and his cheeks, and thin lines of sweat ran down his backbone, even though his arms and legs were icy-cold. It was only when he tripped on a net of brambles and wasn't able to push himself up again that he knew he could not go on. 

Neither could he lie there on the ground, where anyone who happened by might find him. He crawled through the underbrush until his shoulder struck against the ancient, half-decayed bulk of some fallen forest giant and his groping hands located a small burrow of some sort, large enough for Merry to creep inside and curl up in--which he did, knees to his chest and cloak wrapped round as much of his body as it would cover. The floor was sandy and Merry had gone far past the point of minding its slight dampness. Head pillowed on his arms, hood pulled over his face, he slept. 

After a long while he woke, desperately thirsty. Merry brought out his small water bottle and drank until it was empty, running his still-dry tongue around the metal rim to catch the last drops of moisture he could find. His pack still contained one apple, some cheese and a good part of the loaf of bread. Merry looked at the food a long while, but it no longer seemed to appeal. The one bite of cheese he forced into his mouth tasted rotted, and the dry bread only made him cough. With his little knife he cut a slice of the apple, chewing and sucking on the fruit until the last of the flavor had gone--but he could not seem to get his throat to swallow the pulp. 

All he wanted was water, and to find it he would have to leave his hole, no matter how he wished to lie curled in the little burrow until the heaviness in his head and the aches of his body went away. Clutching the empty bottle, he climbed out into the open, glancing around cautiously to make sure of his safety. Birds and squirrels were there with him, but not a Hobbit to be seen. Merry shut his eyes, waiting for his sense of direction to return, feeling the wind on his cheek and the direction of the sun on his face. 

When he was sure of himself as he could possibly be, Merry set off. The rolling hills grew no less steep, and the woods and copses no less dense. He'd walked for hours, he felt, before he smelled the kind of plants that grow near water, and then it was only a small pond, scarcely more than a puddle, bubbling up between two gnarled roots. Merry flung himself down on his belly to drink, sucking up the cold liquid until his stomach felt swollen. He filled his little bottle, wishing he'd thought to carry a spare, knowing he hadn't thought enough of how hard this journey would be. He hoped his mum didn't miss him too much (not as much, at least, as Merry missed her) and more than half of him wished his dad would come striding suddenly through the forest, scoop him up and carry him home again. 

Thinking of his mum and dad, Merry could not hold in his tears, and he wept long and hard, until his head ached and his body felt so wrung out all he could do was lie down on the pond's bank and sleep again. 

When he woke, thick night had fallen and his sense of direction had failed altogether. His limbs had gone so cold he could hardly feel them, and he knew, suddenly, that if he did not get moving he would die here, in this deep wood, and him mum and dad and Frodo would perhaps never know what had become of him. He began to walk again. 

A different dawn arrived as the wood at last began to thin. Merry could not have said which dawn it was, how many had gone by since he left his home. The day promised to be the warmest so far, and Merry soon felt too hot, so much so that he removed his cloak and coat to relieve the worst of the heat. He came out the edge of the forest into a thin, grey light. 

It did his heart so much good to see open ground again that Merry began to weep, limping as fast as he could out into the cornfields that stretched before him, so glad to be out of the forest that for a moment he paid no heed to any possibility of danger either before or behind. It was then that a dusty, rustling, powerful something swept down upon him, knocking Merry off his feet at the same moment an unimaginable pain tore through his left shoulder. 

Merry screamed, struggling wildly, the air thunderous above him, his toes now barely brushing the tops of the tall corn. The thing that held him, that hurt his shoulder so badly, was clawed and hooked, and Merry at first thought he'd somehow been captured by a dragon, but when he looked up in his struggles he saw dense, barred feathers, scaled legs, a yellow eye. 

His heart stopped with terror. Dragons might be objects of fear in songs and tails, but every young Hobbit knew the things of which he should truly be wary: pikes in the Brandywine, foxes, badgers and bears in the woods, and in the sky...the larger hawks and owls. 

He hadn't watched, he hadn't been careful, and now he'd been caught, dragged upward by the owl's powerful wings. 

With his free hand, Merry reached up, beating at the leg that held him, even as the claws dug more deeply into his flesh. The owl shrieked at him, its flight dipped and side-slipped with his struggles, the cornstalks beat at his dangling legs. 

At last, Merry caught hold of the leg, pushing his body away from it with all his might, despite how the cruel claws tore his small shoulder. The owl screamed again, jealous of its prey, but at last he was dangling free. Utterly unable to hold on any longer, Merry fell. 

He lay for a long while on the dusty soil between the rows, his breath harsh with terror, his body trembling from head to toe. Why hadn't he thought of owls? Why hadn't he thought of anything? His mum would be so frightened, thinking what might have become of him, and his dad too. Perhaps they'd even written to Cousin Bilbo, and to Uncle Dinny and Auntie Egg in Tuckborough. 

Merry's tears of terror gave way to those of bitter regret. Much as he loved Frodo, what he'd done was foolish and wrong, and could only have caused his family dreadful pain. 

Eventually, Merry picked himself up, cradling his injured left arm tenderly. Red soaked the front of his shirt, but Merry tried not to look. Seeing so much of his own blood in one place made him feel dizzy and sick. His mouth and fingers and toes had gone numb and his head hummed. 

Worst of all, he'd no idea at all where he was, or how many leagues lay between him and his destination. Blindly he chose a direction and began to walk. To his surprise, when the cornfield ended, there was a road, a smallish dirt track but a road nonetheless, and not very far at all along the road at all lay the tall, carved pillar of the Three Farthing Stone. 

Merry sat down suddenly on the dusty track. The Three Farthing Stone! The meant he'd come almost to Bywater, and from there it was no distance at all to Hobbiton. 

Merry shrugged out of his pack, which no longer contained anything he wanted and hurt his sore shoulder besides, and began to run along the track. The Stone was not quite as near as he'd thought when he first glimpsed it, but Merry came nigh within what he guessed was an hour and laid his hot, dusty cheek against the cool, rough surface. 

Despite his pain and weariness, however, Merry would not allow himself more than a brief rest, not when he'd come so close to his goal. He quickly found his way to the post road, his small feet pattering on the paving as he moved on in the shuffling gait that was the closest he could achieve to his normal all-out run. 

Soon he began to encounter other Hobbits traveling the road, and was forced to waste much time diving into tall grass, or gutters, or behind trees, so that night had nearly fallen by the time he finally staggered up the Hill and so to Bag End. His sight had filled up with a fog of pain, tears and weariness, and had the door to Bilbo's home been a duller green, he might not have found his way there at all, but gone stumbling on into the deep of night. 

Merry could not use his left hand, but he struggled to reach the knocker and let it fall, hearing the thud echo deep inside Bag End. He waited then, telling himself he'd see Frodo, any moment now he would see Frodo, and everything would turn right again. 

But no answer came to his knock, even when he dropped the knocker a second time, and a third. He'd been raised to know it was extremely bad manners to enter someone's home without an invitation, and Frodo and Bilbo would surely be home soon, wouldn't they? Perhaps he'd even passed them on the Bywater Road one of the times he'd hidden himself--he knew Bilbo to be fond of The Green Dragon Inn. 

Merry sat down on the doorstop to wait, but he was too weary to sit up long. Lying on the doorstop was hard and cold, and in the midst of his many discomforts, the young Hobbit could not bear it. * Perhaps Cousin Bilbo will not mind so very much if I go inside,* Merry thought, putting his hand on the shiny brass knob. *Not if I don't touch or break anything.* 

But when he tried to raised his hands to the knob, his left arm would not lift at all, or even move, and his right hand did not have the strength to turn the knob on its own. Weeping with frustration, Merry dropped once more to the stoop, bending his small head with its snarled, dirty curls down over his knees. All he'd wanted was Frodo, to feel Frodo's arms around him--how could his cousin not be here when he needed him so badly? 

Merry picked himself up again, wishing more than ever that he'd never left home. His stomach burned and ached with hunger, and every part of him trembled, hurting his injured shoulder. Sadly, he shuffled round Bag End to the garden. At least it was peaceful there, and the late-blooming flowers smelled sweet. Merry laid himself down on a little wooden bench , tucking his cloak around himself as best he could with only one arm. Curled up beneath this small warmth, he slept. 

In the night, his slumbers thickened, filling with terrible dreams of swooping owls. Merry lay shivering, not really awake or asleep, pained and weary beyond anything he had ever experienced, and angry with himself in some distant part of his mind. He'd set out to find his Frodo, and yet he doubted his quest. He'd let his suffering make him believe his goal wasn't worthy, and maybe he hadn't deserved to find Frodo after all. Maybe he hadn't even reached Bag End at all, but still lay in the dark of the forest, dreaming of all he desired. 

Why was he so hot and cold at the same time, and why did his shoulder ache so? 

He woke when a Hobbit hand touched his cheek and gazed into gray eyes too near the earth to belong to a grown up. In fact, when Merry looked closer, they appeared to belong to a lad a little older than himself, about Berilac's age--his face was a bit rounder than Merry's and yet a bit less babyish, his hands were bigger and he appeared to be taller. 

"Lie still now," the lad told him softly, in the accents of Hobbiton. "You just lie still there, while I fetch Mr. Bilbo." 

Merry's eyes slipped shut again. It would all be over now. All the badness would end. "Frodo," he called, in a voice so small and hoarse it could hardly be heard. "Frodo, please come to me." 

He listened to the sounds of running, Hobbit feet slapping the hard-packed paths, then the familiar, so-beloved hand was stroking his brow, pushing Merry's tangled curls out of his face.. "Oh, Merry, Merry!" he cried. "What have you done, you bad little Hobbit?" 

Merry made a small sound, but could not speak. Frodo's arms were catching him up, holding him with a tightness that was agony to his injured shoulder, but Merry did not care. No pain was too high a price to feel Frodo's arms around him again. He buried his face in Frodo's shirt and waistcoat, snuggling in as he had since he was very young, rubbing his nose on the soft fabrics. Frodo did not smell the way he usually did. He smelled of forest and earth, and that confused Merry--wasn't this Hobbit holding him his cousin after all? 

Merry pushed away, lifting his face. Yes, there was Frodo's chin and Frodo's dark curls and his blue, blue eyes, but the whites of those eyes were reddened, as if he'd not slept, or been weeping, and indeed the tears were pouring down Frodo's cheeks. 

This perplexed Merry. What was Frodo crying for? They were together now. 

And then it struck him: Frodo had called him bad. His Frodo thought he was bad. Merry's chin trembled and tears flooded his own blue eyes. "Please love me, Frodo," he pleaded in his tiny rasp of a voice. "Please love me still. It's been so hard to reach you." 

Frodo held him tighter still, his fingers clawed into the back of Merry's waistcoat. "Love you, Merry? How can you say that?" 

*Oh*, Merry thought. He'd never pictured this, that all his pain and effort would only push his cousin further away and make Frodo not love him anymore. His world spun out of all reason, and his heart broke with a terrible sound that Merry was sure all of Hobbiton must hear. The all of a sudden he could not hold his head up, or keep his eyes directed ahead, or do anything but sink into a deep, dark place. 

A small body lay in the bed beside Merry, soft and heavy and warm. Honey-brown curls nearly the same shade as his own straggled over the pillow. 

*Oh, so it's my new cousin!* Merry thought. *And he is a lad after all! How has he grown so big, so soon?* 

Something in that didn't make sense, and so Merry examined the notion more carefully. His cousin could not be born yet, much less grown bigger than him. And this, he remembered suddenly, was not the Great Smials, but Bag End. He recalled, too, the things Frodo had said to him: that he was bad and unworthy of love. His broken heart ached in his chest. 

Merry moved carefully, wondering if he could sit up, but his own body felt heavy, and terribly weak. His left arm seemed to be tied fast against his stomach, indeed, the tight bandages ran all the way up to his shoulder, as well as across his chest, hurting him badly. Merry set to work with his teeth and the deft small fingers of his right hand, worrying the knots until they began to loosen. 

But the little Hobbit beside him sat up suddenly, caught hold of his hand and held it tight. "Oh, no, Master Merry, you mustn't! Mr. Bilbo says you'll hurt your poor shoulder if you fuss with those, and I was put to watch you while Mr. Frodo slept." 

Merry studied the lad's broad, pleasant face, which looked very kind, and more than a little worried. If he were to undo his bandages he might cause this young Hobbit trouble, and that would be an act unworthy of a future Master's son. He gave a small nod. 

The lad set Merry's hand tenderly by his side, giving a small pat for good measure. "Did you really walk all the way from Buckland like they say?" His brow furrowed, as if he could not comprehend such a distance. "And you only a little 'un." 

"I'm seven," Merry told him, in the same small, raspy voice that seemed the only thing left of his normal one. "Or almost. I'll be seven on First Yule." 

"Well, they do say Yule babies are born lucky." The young Hobbit's eyes widened. "And as my da told me, 'Samwise, I'd say Young Master Merry is more than proof of that.'" 

Samwise? Merry thought. What an odd name! He tried it his mouth, feeling the soft middle and the little hisses at beginning and end on his tongue. 

"Well, *Sam*, that is," the young Hobbit said, "My da works Mr. Bilbo's garden." 

Merry did not feel any superiority of position. Mostly, he felt only the sadness that this Samwise would see Frodo every day, and he would not, for he possessed no illusions that he wouldn't soon be sent home. 

And indeed, he soon heard him own mum's rapid footsteps on the floors of Bag End, and then she was bursting into his room. "Merry! Oh, my Merry!" she cried, bitter tears already flowing from her moss-green Took eyes. Bilbo trailed behind her, and the look he gave Merry was stern. Merry himself felt his face get hotter than ever, because his poor dear mum had gone terribly pale, and her eyes were swollen not only with the weight of recent tears, but with the tears of many days. Her hands trembled, trying to touch every inch of him, and then her knees were folding. Bilbo and young Sam pushed a chair in behind her before Esme could fall to the floor. Her face pressed against the edge of the bed and her hands clutched so hard on Merry's unbandaged arm the fingers bit into his skin. 

Bilbo left momentarily, returning with a small glass that he set to Esme's lips. "Drink, my dear," he told her kindly. "Your little one's safe now. You've nothing to fear." 

But his mum's eyes were full of shadows, Merry saw, shadows he had put there. And somehow he knew all the sorrys he could say in the whole of his lifetime would not be enough to take them away again. 


	7. Two Meetings

A/N: Oh, happiness! Reviews! You don't know how that makes my day. Marigold, thank you very much for your kind comments and for the note about Sam's age. Of course, you're absolutely right, and I don't know how that fact fell out of my head. Needing a new brain, I guess. Anyway, I've fixed it and reposted now. P.N.Batgirl and eiluj, than you also--I truly appreciate the encouragement. EloraCooper4: no need to apologize for anything! You've been my most loyal reviewer, and I love your detailed comments. 

On with the show! 

Chapter 7: Two Meetings 

Buckland - 1484 SR 

Pippin is singing a very silly song as we walk along, one of those with what I always call a -folderol chorus, though I am not entirely certain whether the nonsense words belong to the song, or if Pip has merely put them in because he's forgotten the proper ones. It's not in my dear cousin to let such a thing stop him, and in a part of myself it takes me back to my youth, as if I am walking once more with Tom Bombadil. At any rate, my heart is much lightened this morning, after a good, long lie in and an excellent second breakfast. It's a fine thing to ramble in the Shire with the sun on one's face before the fading of the year. 

I feel sorry that I left Pip sitting on his own so long yesterday, though he seems to have put his time to good use, as my grandchildren all were rather subdued this morning, causing me to suspect a surfeit of romping in my cousin's company. I do love to see their bright faces lined up along the table, though it amazes me rather how much they all resemble me, as if my face was the final mold for all future generations of Brandybucks. It makes me feel somehow that I will not be leaving the Shire after all. 

I must see that when this book is closed, and I set down my pen, that a copy finds its way back to Brandy Hall. Magnificent I may not be, in truth, but it is in the nature of Hobbits that we wish to be remembered. Dear Strider will see to it, I think. 

"Hurry up, slowcoach!" Pippin calls to me, so very quick still for all his ninety-four years, though a little rounder than he used to be. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we can eat!" 

I can't help but laugh at him, at the way time has been entirely unable to dim his enthusiasms. So often I've wondered, *whatever would I have done without my Pip?* If that troll had fallen in only a slightly different direction, or a stray arrow found him when we drove Sharkey's ruffians (or should I say Saruman's?--no, I think I will not; he was not worthy of that name, at the end) from our home, if the Flux that swept the Shire in 1426 and took my little Floramonde had struck him only a little harder. Every day I ask the Valar, *When we travel, let us not be parted, when we come to our final rest, let me go ahead.* 

"Oh, dear me, Merry!" Pippin exclaims. "You look like Old Rory when you wear that face." He grabs my hand, dragging me forcefully up the breast of the hill. "There now, we can see half of Buckland, and the mist over the Old Forest and a handful of lads and lasses on the millpond, and the Bucklebury Ferry being poled across." He dropped the picnic basket he'd been carrying quite carelessly to the ground, making me fear for the bottles inside. "I wonder who's coming to visit?--I can't make it out from here. How I do love this hill! Remember when what we could see from here seemed the scope of the entire world?" 

"Very well," I reply, wrapping my arms round him from behind, my face just beside his, so that I see what he sees. We've stood this way so often since we were lads. "Aye, but it's a lovely morning, Pip." 

"The loveliest," he answers, and we stand there a little, breathing in distant woodsmoke and the lighter perfume of the mist as the sun burns it away. "Where were you so late last night, Merry? I'd expected you for tea." 

"I am very sorry to have kept you waiting--though I must say, the Post does reach Buckland, even if we are a strange and foreign land. Did you never think of writing to say you would come? I thought you'd be terribly occupied with the duties of the Thain." 

"Oh, that," Pip laughs. "Faramir may have it. I think I'm quite done with Thaining now." 

I can't help but laugh with him at the made-up word, but I know that half his lightness is put on for my benefit. He worked as hard as anyone, except perhaps dear Sam, to rebuild the Shire after the wars, and he's performed his duties all these many years with dignity and all the honest fairness of his brave and decent heart. But for all we've experienced, all that's come near to breaking me, Pippin has remained Pippin, always and forever a being of goodness and joy, my rock that I've clung to, when all the time I was thought to be the strong one. 

"My Pip," I say, "Not even a troll could crush you!" 

"No, not even a troll!" he laughs back, "Though it tried very hard at the time. But I won't allow you evade my question: where did you go?" 

The truth was, I'd meant only to stop by the bonny green place where my Estella and little Floramonde and my mum and dad lie, only to stop and pay my respects after the day's business concluded, and perhaps talk to them a bit. 

Mum would have understood best, I think, in her Tookish heart what I mean to do. And Floramonde, daughter of my own heart, would have loved Rohan, with its wild fields and the galloping horses. How fair she was, my little one, gentlest of all my children! 

My dad would not have understood my leaving this last time, any more than he understood when I followed Frodo, but he would bless me still, I think, as he did then, and be glad, after all, that Buckland is left in good hands. 

Estella was hardest to say goodbye to, as I crouched on my old knees beside where she lies, tidying the grass, picking off the drifted leaves. Every spring, flowers burst above her, first the crocuses in Solmath, then Rethe's daffodils and Astron's tulips. I know that Sariadoc and Esme-lass and Stella will see that brightness never fails. 

I confess I wept many bitter tears over my dear one's last bed, and I hope that she will understand why I will not lie beside her, until we meet on that far shore, young and joyful and golden again, as we were when I saw her walking through the barley on Litheday, with daisies in her hair, the year after our return. 

"I went to say goodbye to *them*," I say softly. Pip understands. His hand gently caresses my arms, now crossed over his chest. 

"I've done that too," he confesses, "Said goodbye to mum and dad and Pearl. And the living ones too. Pervinca is very angry with me, but Pimmie understands." He pauses, the both of us watching a falcon rise overhead. "Was that a peregrine?" he asks. 

"No," I answer, "It was a harrier, as you very well know. You're always looking for peregrines." 

"Do you think they expected me to be fierce, when they named me? My mum and dad? Of course, there was no thought of Thainship then." 

I remember Pip's naming-day, in a vague way, for he was born in a difficult time in my young life and some of those memories are more muddled than the ones before or since. "I think," I say, "That they thought it a handsome name, and they were running out of words that began with 'P.'" 

For some reason, this makes Pippin laugh uproariously. 

It's good to have Pip here with me, after all these years of to-ing and fro-ing from Buckland to Tuckborough and back again. We've had our responsibilities, both of us, and while we understood the value of what must be done, it's good to know now that for all the goodbyes that must be said to friends and family and home, there need be no more goodbyes between we two. When Pippin isn't here, I miss him. The day I watched him ride off on Shadowfax with Gandalf for Minas Tirith (the fifth of March that was, in the year of the third age 3019, or 5 Rethe 1419 in Shire Reckoning--I like to be precise about these things, a habit I picked up from Frodo) and the day I watched from the walls as my Pip rode off again to battle (less than a fortnight later, that was, though it seemed an entire age).were the days I came closest in my life to utter despair. 

There is no life in me without my Pippin. 

I hug him tighter then, perhaps too tight, for he wriggles a bit, grunting, "Oi! Mind the ribs, Mer! You're dreadfully strong for an old Hobbit." 

I ignore that, mostly, but I do loosen my hold. "Do you know something else about this hill?" I ask. "It's where Frodo first met Gandalf." 

"Is it?" Pip turns his head to stare quite hard at the gnarled old tree behind us, us if expecting an old man in grey to pop out of its shadows. "Is it really, now?" 

***************************************************************************** 

Bag End - 1389 SR 

Second breakfast at Bag End, Frodo discovered, was almost as ample as First Breakfast, with toast and bacon and apple slices stewed with cinnamon and sugar, and perhaps a boiled egg if one felt like it. Being a bachelor, Bilbo rarely ate at the formal dining table unless he had guests, preferring the clean, polished oaken table tucked before the kitchen fire, convenient to the kettle and the range. Bilbo had dishes of fine pale-brown clay painted with intricate designs, and as he loved to cook and also to eat, the fare was quite equal to anything served at Brandy Hall. 

Frodo had always admired Bilbo, and found his company quite agreeable, ever since he was a little lad, for Bilbo was full of songs and marvellous stories, and always quite ready to listen to Frodo's imaginings, a rare quality among Hobbits, since even the Tooks and Brandybucks tended somewhat toward the practical, and after a certain age did not spend much of their time thinking of fanciful things. Even his dear little Merry, though always excited to hear a new tale, had no understanding that Frodo made up the stories he told out of his own head. In fact, he'd once seen Merry searching his room quite diligently when he thought Frodo was out, on a quest for the book with all the wonderful stories. 

"I wanted to look at the pictures," Merry had said. 

The thought of his little cousin made Frodo hang his head over his tea and wonder what Merry might be up to at that moment. Having his own second breakfast, Frodo supposed, though at Bag End one rose later in the day, and one's meals were subsequently pushed forward. In fact, that morning (his first in his new home) it had been the grumbling of his stomach that awakened him, with the sun much higher in the sky than he was used to, rather than the tumult of a young cousin leaping onto his bed with claims that it was quite, quite late and time to start the day. 

No, he remembered, most likely Merry would *not* be up and about at all. The picture of little Merry wrapped up snug on soft cushions in the back of The Red Swan's pony trap tugged at his heart. How still poor Merry had been, his face pale, his round cheeks hectic with fever. Frodo kissed his hot brow before the trap rolled away, and wished his young cousin good speed, but Merry's normally bright eyes were glazed and Frodo doubted he'd heard. 

"Frodo, lad," Bilbo said to him, in his forthright yet comfortable way, "Don't distress yourself too much over the little lad. The Brandybucks are strong stock. I'd wager young Merry will pull through and be back terrorizing Brandy Hall before the week is through." 

There was wisdom in that, Frodo knew. Through some special blessing of the Valar, he supposed, Merry had always been an unusually hearty lad, often with more energy that he knew what to do with. Although he'd suffered the usual childhood ailments of sniffles, sore throats and earaches, he always seemed to shake off in a day or so what would have taken another young Hobbit a week to recover from--as Frodo had good cause to know, from all the times he'd been confined to bed trying to recover from illnesses caught from his unstoppable small cousin. For all the numerous occassions Merry had fallen out of trees or into swift-moving water or down hills, he'd never taken more than a few cuts and scrapes, or at most a twisted ankle or wrist. 

Frodo sighed, then glanced up into Bilbo's glad old face with its twinkling blue eyes and shock of grey-white curls. "Yes, Uncle Bilbo" (when he'd arrived the day before, his cousin had told him that now he was to live there, with Bilbo as his guardian, he might as well call him by that name--since though he was too old to be a father, the title of uncle suited him nicely). "Yes, it's just..." Try as he might, Frodo couldn't put what he felt into words. After his parents drowned, but before Merry's birth he had lived in a world of dreariness and sadness, without color, without light, and with only the adventures of his imaginings for company, for he'd no cousins of his own age at Brandy Hall, and the local lads and lasses who were not his relations had taken either to shunning or tormenting him, as a stronger animal will prey upon a weaker. It wasn't even that they meant to be cruel, it was that, somehow, his sadness and his silences offended them, and because of this he'd been nearly always alone, and often near despair. His Uncle Rory and Auntie Menegilda understood him very little, and it wasn't until he'd discovered in his Cousin Esme a similar well of sorrow that he'd enjoyed the comfort of any confidant. 

And still, talking of sorrow was not the same as feeling joy, and soon enough his Cousin had been confined to her bed, in hopes, the healers said, of keeping yet another child of hers from slipping away. 

He still remembered the murmurs and the whispers, the shaking of heads. He'd been absolutely convinced that this little lad or lass would be lost too, and the fellowship he'd newly forged with his older cousin would be broken upon the rocks of a grief too great for her to bear. They'd spent long hours together, the two of them, reading, talking, even merely gazing out the windows, Esme's hands still and silent, for although the well-meaning aunties and cousins of the Hall brought her bits of cut-out fabrics, threads and buttons and wools to make clothes for the expected little one, Esmeralda would not put her fingers to them. 

"Why?" Frodo had asked her, stroking a delicate soft cotton with his fingertip, but Esme's green Took eyes stared back at him fiercely, and he'd known well enough--his cousin did not expect there to be a child to dress in those tiny clothes. 

As she reached her seventh month, her belly mounded like the moon beneath the bedclothes, Esme began to sew upon one little dress, and one little dress alone. Frodo watched her closely then, his cousin's slender, clever fingers taking a thousand tiny stitches, tucking and pleating the minute gown. The garment constructed, she began to stitch fancy work upon the breast and sleeves and hem. He'd seen such little dresses on babies before, worn on their naming-days and then laid carefully away. 

It made him glad, the thought that Esme believed her little lad or lass would have a name, and be looked upon by family and friends, loved and cuddled and blessed. And then he'd noticed the terrible grief upon his cousin's face as she stitched so carefully. 

She wasn't making the gown for her baby's naming, but for its burying day. 

Seeing that, he'd run out of her room, down the corridor and out the Western door. The cold, raw air burned his face for the weather was unseasonably chill, even for late in Winterfilth, and all the world seemed tired, grey and sad, as if it had been weeping a very long time. 

It had been one year today, he realized, since he'd met Cousin Esme beneath the Willow by the riverside, and they'd planned to run away together. Now Frodo wished he had gone after all. That he was living amongst the Elves and would never have to be with Hobbits anymore. 

He ran until he'd reached the tallest hill in Buckland, panting madly and with a tearing stitch in his side. It seemed impossible that the world should be so cruel as to take a little lad's parents, or a sweet lady's children. Where were the Valar who were meant to watch over them all? 

Throwing back his head, Frodo shrieked into the unfeeling air, "You can't have him, you can't have him! He's ours, and we need him!" A strange feeling twisted his heart, half fear at his own temerity as so addressing the guardians of the world, half the grief of a sad young Hobbit who desperately wanted a friend. "If you let us have him," he whispered, "I'll do anything. Anything you ever ask of me, even if I have to leave the Shire and travel to the ends of the earth. Even if I must suffer and die. We're made for happiness here, and I seem to have lost all of mine." 

Only then did Frodo notice an old man in a grey robe, sitting with legs stretched out before him and his back against the bole of a leafless tree. The old man puffed at long-stemmed Hobbit pipe, gazing up at him thoughtfully with blue-grey eyes that were bright and faded all at once. 

Frodo stiffened. He'd seen dwarves a time or two, visiting his Uncle Rory, and once thought he'd glimpsed a band of elves, far in the distance, wreathed in flowing golden light. This, however, was the first Big Person he'd ever seen, and his immediate instinct was to take flight and hide himself with all the cleverness of his kind. 

'No, stay my little lad. Sit beside me," the old man said, touching the drifted leaves by his side. 

Frodo moved cautiously, not sure if he should trust this being who was, after all, so very, very large, and was rather dirty and unkempt, and carried a sturdy staff. Yet, something compelled him, and he sat where the old man indicated. 

The Big Person blew a smoke ring that wasn't a ring, but instead a tree, then one that looked like a dragon and flapped its wings. "You," the old man said, "Are not a Brandybuck." 

"I'm half Brandybuck," Frodo answered, surprised by his boldness. "I live at the Hall. And...and...they know I'm out here." 

"Do they?" the old man answered. "Curious." His next smoke ring resembled a mountain. "I'd thought you'd run out all alone and very unquiet in your mind, without telling a soul your destination. You are a Baggins, or I'll eat my hat." 

As this item of clothing was very tall, very pointed and quite thick and felty, Frodo thought the old man had good cause to be glad his statement was correct. 

"I am a Baggins," he answered truthfully, giving the little bow his mum had taught him when he was only a small lad. "Frodo Baggins, at your service and...er...your family's." He said the last bit doubtfully, not sure that such a being would stand possessed of such a mundane thing as a family. 

"Ah, Frodo! Son of Drogo Baggins and the lovely Primula Brandybuck." 

"They're dead," Frodo blurted--the first time he had ever said such a thing. The bald truth made him feel hollow and weak. 

"Yes, dear boy, I know," the old man answered, his eyes shining with kindness. "And a very hard loss to bear indeed." 

Frodo nodded with a lump in his throat. 

"I am Gandalf, Frodo Baggins," the old man said. "I am a wizard." 

"Gandalf!" Frodo exclaimed. "Not the Gandalf of Cousin Bilbo's stories, who tricked the trolls and called eagles and fought Goblins and Wargs!" 

"Yes, indeed," the wizard replied, bowing slightly from the waist with one hand over his heart. "One and the same." 

"Oh!" Frodo breathed. He'd never thought to meet a wizard of any sort, much less the one who'd pushed his older cousin out onto his adventures. 

"Now, lad, who were you calling to so loudly now, waking an old man from his nap?" 

Frodo hung his head, not wanting to say. He felt foolish and ashamed. "No one," he muttered. 

"Are the Valar no one?" Gandalf asked. "Do you call the guardians of the world no one? That was who you were petitioning, was it not?" 

Frodo scuffed with his bare toes in the damp earth. "Yes," he answered, in a small voice. 

"They take such vows seriously, you know, my lad. Are you truly prepared to give what you have offered--not now, while you are so young, but at some time in your life? What is it you fear losing that you'd make such a promise?" 

Frodo looked up, finally daring to meet the wizard's bright, inquiring eyes. "Cousin Esme's so afraid her baby's going to die," he said. "And I...I'm afraid too. I'm so lonely Gandalf. I should like very much to have a little cousin who would be my friend." 

"Ah," Gandalf said, "So that is it, is it?" 

"I suppose that's not a very great thing," Frodo answered. "Not to them." 

"I think their answer to that question might surprise you, young Frodo Baggins, " the wizard said, his lined and weathered face radiant with kindness. "And I hope, as well, that you are never called to fulfill your promise, but live out your life here in the Shire in great happiness and peace." 

Frodo nodded; that was a good thing to hope. 

"He will be called Merry," the old man said softly. "Meriadoc Brandybuck. He will have the Brandybuck eyes and a rascal's smile and if you are ever called out to the ends of the earth, he will go with you gladly. Be sure you take those, Frodo, who will go with you gladly." Gandalf reached up, taking Frodo's small hand in his large, gnarled one, warming his chilled fingers. "Now, go back inside my lad, and tell your poor cousin to be of good cheer, for she will have her heart's desire and learn to laugh again. Tell her Gandalf says it will be so." 

And Frodo ran back to the Hall, fast as his legs could carry him, bursting once more through the Western door, along the corridor and into his Cousin Esme's chamber. 

"Gandalf says," he panted, "that your baby will be born, and will be a little lad, and he will grow up and be my friend. Gandalf says!" 

Esme put down her embroidery, then took it up again, the little dress crumpled in her hands so that she pricked her finger on her needle and blood spotted the small gown. "Gandalf says so?" she breathed. "How can this be?" Her face grew pale, then brightened again and the brightness returned also to her eyes. "Saradoc!" she called aloud. "Saradoc, come listen to what Frodo says." 

On Yule Eve, that year, Frodo was sent to Cousin Merimac's chambers, to sleep in little Berilac's room. Cousin Beryl, Merimac's wife, helped him hang his Yule hood on the end of his bed, tucked her small son in tighter and wished Frodo good night. 

"Will the Grandfather know where to leave my things?" Frodo asked her, as she moved to blow out the light--even though he suspected that he'd grown nearly too old to believe in the Grandfather anymore, and suspected that the sweets and nuts and little toys that appeared each year in his hood had perhaps more to do with the uncles and aunties and grown cousins of Brandy Hall. Still, it was nice, on this night at least, to believe. He felt heavy and sleepy with good Yule food and the dancing and games, and quite ready to take for granted a number of things. 

"He will know, Frodo dear," Beryl answered. "And perhaps, by morning, there'll be some other lovely thing for you, as well." 

Frodo lay snug beneath his quilt, listening to small Berilac's snores and wondering what his surprise might be. Something lovely, Beryl had said. A new book? A game? Some nice inks with which to draw? 

Very early, before first light, Cousin Saradoc woke him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Frodo, lad, would you like to see?" 

"See what, cousin?" Frodo asked sleepily, his eyes heavy in his head as stones. 

Saradoc laid a finger on his lips and lifted him out of bed, helping Frodo to put on his dressing gown. Silently as only Hobbits can, they tip-toed from Merimac's rooms and along the corridor to where he and Saradoc and Esme lived. His cousin's eyes, Frodo noticed, were very red, perhaps with tears, but his smile stretched so broadly it threatened to split his face. 

"In here, lad," he said, still whispering, as he ushered Frodo into the great bedroom. 

Esme lay propped up on many pillows, covered over with a quilt Frodo had not seen before. She'd circles under her eyes, and her curls were flat and damp, but she glowed with a joy Frodo had never seen before on his cousin's face. He began to weep a little because it reminded him of his mum's face when she was very proud of him. 

"Lift him up, Sari," Esme said, in a tired but joyful voice, and when his cousin's strong hands had deposited Frodo on the empty side of the bed, he saw that Esmeralda held a small something in her arms. 

Gently, she unfolded the soft, light blankets that covered her small bundle, and Frodo saw before him the most perfect little Hobbit lad he'd ever beheld. 

"He's so new!" he breathed, brushing a tiny clenched fist with his fingertip. The baby's hand opened, and to Frodo's great surprise clutched onto him quite tightly. With his other hand, he brushed the little lad's plump small legs, his rounded belly with the odd little bit of string that was the cord, the dimpled arms. The baby's mouth opened and he made a happy, hungry squawking sound. 

"Very new," Esme agreed, kissing the honey-colored fuzz at the top of the baby's head--he'd more honeyish fuzz on his tiny toes, Frodo was amazed to observe. He gave another demanding squawk, little turned-up nose wrinkling and his eyes clenched up as if he meant to cry, but it seemed that he was laughing instead. 

"Merry!" Frodo said, suddenly unable to do anything but grin. "Happy Yule, Merry!" He couldn't help but bounce a bit on the mattress, but not too roughly, because he didn't wish to hurt his cousin. 

"Frodo," Saradoc said, laughing now too. "How did you know the baby's name?" 

"Well," Frodo answered, perplexed, "What else could he be called? 


	8. Lost and Found

Chapter 8: Lost and Found 

Bag End - 1389 SR 

Frodo spent his first morning at Bag End quite happily, occupied with setting his new room to rights. To the handsome bedstead, wardrobe and armchair he'd brought with him from Brandy Hall (all of which had once belonged to his mother before her marriage) Bilbo had added a night-table and a small desk of cunning design, with numerous drawers of various sizes, perfect for holding both a scholar's supplies (for Bilbo intended his new ward to continue his studies--indeed, Frodo was set to begin learning Elvish on the morrow) and a young Hobbit's treasures. Frodo amused himself for some time with glancing into these drawers, and he was pleased to find many of the larger ones well supplied with paper and parchment, while the smaller held quills, inks of various useful colors, a little pen knife and an assortment of blotters, penwipers and sealing wax. 

On either side of the desk shelves were set into the walls, already half-filled with a number of interesting-looking volumes. To these, Frodo added his own favorite books, aligning each neatly and according to his own system until he small shelves were quite satisfactorily stuffed. Frodo put his clothes away in the wardrobe, various other small items in the drawers, desktop and night table and then stood looking about the chamber with pleasure. 

It was a lovely room, one of the finest in Bag End, as it possessed a large round window that overlooked the garden, and a thickly cushioned windowseat perfectly suited for reading or dreaming in. 

Frodo knelt on the cushions with his elbows on the sill. Outside, a stout Hobbit in a sturdy smock and canvas trousers raked up a blaze of fallen leaves, while a small lad, similarly clothed, bustled about collecting the piles into a little barrow. Frodo recognized the older Hobbit as Hamfast Gamgee, Bilbo's gardener, a kindly, plain-spoken Hobbit utterly devoted to his master. The young lad, he decided must be one of Gamgee's several children. 

"Mark my words, Frodo my boy," Bilbo said suddenly from behind him, causing Frodo to startle. "That little lad will grow to be the finest gardener the Shire has ever seen, for I've never met a young Hobbit with such a feeling for green and growing things." 

"He seems a sturdy, helpful lad," Frodo answered, trying to keep his own voice steady. In truth, even though the young Hobbit was a bit older than Merry, something in his childish energy reminded Frodo of his cousin, and he couldn't help but worry. 

"Well then, Frodo," Bilbo asked, "do you approve of your new home, or no?" 

"Very much indeed...er...Uncle Bilbo. It's a lovely room. And I think anyone would find it hard to name a finer hole in all the Shire than Bag End." 

"Even after the magnificence of Brandy Hall?" Bilbo asked, laughing. 

"Even so," Frodo answered with a smile. "Certainly, it's far quieter." In truth, he was beginning to find the silence somewhat unnerving--he couldn't quite escape the feeling that Merry ought to have been there, bouncing on his bed, poking into the corners, sliding up and down from the windowseat, all the while exclaiming over everything he saw with limitless enthusiasm. 

"It's difficult, don't you think," Bilbo said, "To accustom oneself to quiet, when one has grown up in the midst of hubbub and to-do? For myself, I enjoy the silence, perhaps more than I should. It will be good for me to have a young voice about the place--and you must remember Frodo, Bag End is your home as much as mine. Your friends and pursuits are welcome here always." 

Frodo felt tears prickle in his eyes. "You have been so very kind to me, Uncle Bilbo. So very kind." 

"Ah, well--" Bilbo patted his young cousin's shoulder absently. "You're a good lad, Frodo. The best young Hobbit in the Shire, to my mind. And I believe you will be happy here." As he spoke, Bilbo fingered some small thing in his waistcoat pocket, turning it over and over with his fingers. "Those Brandybucks don't know what they've lost. Don't know what they've lost at all." 

Frodo thought of Saradoc's set face and wet eyes as the older Hobbit embraced him and bade him farewell. He remembered dear Esme, so worried about her little one, but still weeping for him, holding Frodo tightly to her heart. 

"I would have kept you for my own, dear lad," she'd murmured, her cheek pressed to his, her tears warm on his skin. "I'd have been proud to be your mum." 

Frodo held her quite tightly in return, and felt as if his heart might well tear in two, for while he looked forward to his life with Bilbo, he ached for this family of cousins who'd cared for him and loved him so well, when he'd thought he should never feel love again. Merely remembering made his eyes well with tears and he wished desperately that he had Merry here to hold, the warm, solid little body encircled in his arms, his face pressed into his small cousin's springy, fragrant curls. 

Frodo wiped his eyes with a shaking hand, hoping that Bilbo would not see. 

"Now, lad. Now, lad," the old Hobbit said quietly. "I know it is great change for you, and a strangeness, but it will not seem so very strange by-and-by. And just as soon as you are nicely settled and your little cousin well again, we will have him to stay. Does that plan agree with you, lad?" 

"Very much, Uncle," Frodo replied. "You are too kind to me." 

Bilbo waved that away. "Not at all, dear boy, not at all! Now, let us just see to luncheon, then have a grand stroll round the neighborhood." He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. "Yes, that will be capital. Capital! And I've some very fine mushrooms. What do you say to mushroom and partridge pie for supper tonight?" 

Frodo answered that it sounded very nice indeed. At Brandy Hall, one never got quite as many mushrooms as one wanted. 

Frodo's next five days passed in much the same manner: excellent meals which he himself was learning to help prepare, quite interesting lessons in Elvish (both Sindarin and Quenya), runes, the histories of Elves and Men, and the naming of the stars. Frodo enjoyed his Uncle Bilbo's company immensely, and if he sometimes felt a little low, thinking of the family he'd parted from, the many diversions of Bag End, Hobbiton and the surrounding countryside soon chased the clouds away. 

An the sixth day, just as he and Bilbo finished elevenses, the Post brought to him a letter from Brandy Hall. Frodo took the plump missive from the carrier, recognizing Cousin Esme's pretty, curly writing on the direction. Still standing on the doorstep, he broke the seal with trembling hands. 

"My Dearest Frodo," Esme wrote. 

I hope that you continue well and happy at Bag End, as Cousin Bilbo writes you do. Have you everything you require there, dearest? You know you need only scribble me a line if there's anything at all you desire and we can supply. I've begun to knit you a new muffler and gloves for this winter, as I recall your old ones will simply not do. I thought blue to match your eyes, love, and there's a new pattern I'm anxious to try, so you must tell me what you think. How I miss your steady hands to help me wind up my yarns! 

Ah, my dear cousin, I must confess I miss *all* of you most awfully. I constantly expect to see you coming round the corners, or your sweet face smiling suddenly up at me. Sari is quite despondent as well, though you know it embarrasses him to reveal too much of what's inside. Even Rory asked after you the other day. 

I expect you have been waiting patiently through my ramblings for news of our Merry. Most of the younger ones here at Brandy Hall have been ill, though none so seriously as my little lad. Rest assured, however, that Merry is much improved. He was able to manage a short visit with his grandfather today, and also come to supper with the family, though he is still rather weak and quieter than his usual self, with not much of his normal appetite. I am certain, however, that with a little time, he will soon be back to himself and become the terror of Brandy Hall once more. 

I look forward to hearing from you very soon, my heart. All our best to dear Bilbo. 

Your loving cousin, 

Esme Brandybuck 

Frodo sat himself down on the doorstep, the letter clutched tightly in his hands. Fiercely, he blinked tears back from his eyes, knowing Esme would not wish him to weep. 

After a time, Bilbo came to look for him, and finding Frodo still hunched on he threshold, drew him to his feet and so inside once more. 

"You know, my lad," Bilbo said, after sitting Frodo down by the kitchen table and pouring him out a cup of tea, warm and sweet with milk and honey. "There's no shame in being homesick. I can only tell you that, in time, it will not hurt so terribly." 

Silently, Frodo passed his guardian the letter. He wrapped both hands round his mug, allowing himself to feel nothing but the warmth, breathing in the honey-scented steam. 

"She loves you very much, your cousin," Bilbo commented. 

Frodo said nothing. 

"It's fine news, that the little one seems to be well on the road to recovery." 

*Merry,* Frodo thought. *Merry.* How easily he could picture his young cousin's desolate small face, as it always looked when Merry was trying his hardest to be brave: the strong jaw thrust out, and Merry's lower lip also, just a little, his snub nose wrinkled with concentration, but most of all his eyes, like the sky just after it's washed fresh by rain, Merry's thoughts and feelings clearly to be read in those grey-blue mirrors. 

"The best thing, my boy," Bilbo told him, "Is to keep your mind otherwise occupied. We talked yesterday of you learning Elvish script. Are you ready to have a go at that today?" 

Frodo nodded gratefully. Yes, that would be just the thing, a difficult task, a challenge to his hand and mind. 

He worked very hard under Bilbo's tutelage, and at the end had a few lines of quite fair script, of which he was justly proud--and very inky fingers. 

"Ah, me, that's enough for one day!" Bilbo announced, stretching until his back popped. "What do you say to a stroll down to Bywater, since it's such a fine night, and a visit to *The Green Dragon*?" 

Frodo was instantly interested. He'd never been allowed ale before, or a visit to the public room of an inn, and he rather suspected that Bilbo's standards, when it came to such matters, might be of a looser sort than Cousin Saradoc's. 

"I'd like that, Uncle Bilbo," he replied. 

"Very well, then, wash your hands and put on your coat, and I'll see you by-and-by." 

It was a fine night for a stroll, the air crisp but not yet frigid, full of the scents of woodsmoke, fresh-pressed cider and the spiciness of fallen leaves. Bilbo kept up a steady stream of chatter as they walked--he'd embarked on a long anecdote regarding his parents, Bungo and Belladonna Baggins (born Took) whose portraits hung above the parlor mantlepiece. This reminiscence led him to discuss geneology in general and the offspring of the Old Took, of whom Bilbo's mum was the ninth of twelve, in particular, and from there to the myriad connections between the Baggins family and the Took and Brandybuck clans throughout the years. All in all, it was quite enough to make Frodo's head spin before he'd enjoyed so much as his first sip of ale. 

When they reached Bywater they found the Green Dragon ablaze with welcoming light, and inside its sturdy round door the air was fragrant with pipeweed, with the sharp sweetness of strong cider and the rich yeastiness of ale. A great many Hobbits (both gentlefolk in embroidered waistcoats and skirted coats, and those dressed in the plainer, sturdier clothing of Hobbits who worked with their hands) called out greetings to Bilbo. Many inquiries were made as well regarding Frodo's identity, who his parents were, and whether the Bucklanders were truly as peculiar as was generally said--the general consensus being that any Hobbits who swam and messed about in boats could not be called right in the head. 

Frodo did not like to think of boats, and though he'd learned to swim as a little lad, he had not come willingly into the water for many years. A time or two, on very hot days, he'd given in to Merry's entreaties and tried (fearless Merry loved to swim, would in fact spend every waking moment he was allowed either in or on the water and, as he was not allowed to do either without a responsible elder present, he found Frodo's distrust of the river and pont a sore trial to bear indeed). The moment the water rose higher than his waist, though, the most horrible sensation of choking would over come him. Once he'd even gone so far as to swoon, so great was his fear, and had come back to himself, half on the riverbank and half out, Merry's cold little fingers stroking his brow as his cousin assured Frodo he mustn't be afraid, his Merry was there. 

Frodo smiled at the things the Bywater Hobbits said, assured them that Bucklanders were not quite so strange as all that, and sat down at one of the smaller tables across from Bilbo, looking round himself with interest and delight. 

The pretty pot-girl brought Bilbo a half-pint and Frodo a smaller cup, which Bilbo said was called a gilly. He sipped experimentally, not precisely sure what to expect--from the yeast smell, something like bread, he supposed. And there was in the drink something of that, along with an almost nut-like flavor, and with it a sourness too, and a smoothness, and bubbles that danced wonderfully on the tongue. His first large swallow slipped down his throat delightfully, its coolness transmuting to warmth in his stomach. 

"It's very good!" he exclaimed, rather surprised really, for ale was nothing at all like anything he'd drunk in the past. Before long, a mild pleasant hum set up in his head, leaving him relaxed and quite happy, a feeling that lingered after they'd said goodnight to the company and begun the journey homeward. 

Bilbo sang cheerfully as they walked: 

*On the fourteenth of Rethe, at the dawn of the day 

With my bow on my shoulder to the woods I did stray 

In search of some game, should the weather prove fair, 

To see could I get a shot at the bonny...* 

Bilbo stopped himself, giggling and shaking his head (he'd enjoyed quite a bit more of the Dragon's good brew than Frodo, but still seemed, except for the merriment, very little worse for wear). "No, not quite the thing for young ears. Not quite the thing a'tall. You sing me a song, Frodo. You've a fair voice." 

Frodo thought a bit, and blushed a bit more, for though he liked to sing, his audience had been, for the most part only Merry, and the songs Merry liked, about the little white duck swimming on the water, or the five little speckled frogs, or the gift of pretty ponies for young Hobbits who went to sleep nicely didn't seem to fit the moment. 

He remembered a very sad song he'd heard Esme sing once, and somehow its sweet melancholy suited his mood: 

"*There's an herb grows in your garden*," he sang. 

*And some do call it rue. 

When swallows dive and fishes fly 

Then young lads will prove true...* 

When Frodo glanced over to see how Bilbo liked his, he saw tears standing int he old Hobbit's eyes. 

"Bilbo?" he asked softly. "What is it? I didn't mean..." 

"I loved your Auntie Amaranth," Bilbo told him, gazing up that the bright stars above. "What a sweet lass she was, with a light step and laughter in her eyes. But I was not true to her, and I los her, bringing sorrow upon us both. I wonder now what my life would have been, had I been as faithful to her as she was to me?" 

Frodo thought of Auntie Amaranth, his mother's unmarried elder sister, she of the faded eyes and heavily lined face, who had been his first schoolmistress at the Hall. Her looks when one shirked one's lessons or blotted one's papers could have frozen the Brandywine on Litheday. 

"Oh, but it's a funny old world," Bilbo laughed suddenly, "and I am too old to waste many minutes in melancholy or regret. You have fine and fair voice, my lad, and I thank you for singing to me." 

They started up The Hill, but when they passed by Bagshot Row young Samwise, who'd obviously been set to watch for their return, pelted out from the front door of Number 3. 

"Mr. Bilbo! Mr. Bilbo, sir!" he cried. "There's a messenger come for you from Brandy Hall! We've given him a bite and a sup, but he says he must see you at once." 

Frodo went cold inside, and the ale he'd drunk seemed to rise up and push at the back of his throat, to be forced down again only with difficulty. *Merry,* he thought. *Oh, my Merry.* 

Bilbo considered this briefly. "Thank you, Samwise. Give us a moment to reach our front door, then bring him up, if you will." 

The lad nodded, obviously proud to be entrusted with such a charge. Nodding again, he sped back inside. 

Numbly, Frodo followed Bilbo to Bag End, hardly daring to allow himself to think or feel. Soon the messenger arrived, a young Hobbit in his late tweens whom Frodo knew slightly--he was one of the Brandy Hall grooms, and had a fine touch with the ponies. Obviously, he'd ridden hard to reach Hobbiton, for mud splotched his clothing and his face bore deep lines of weariness. 

"Sit down, my lad, sit down," Bilbo urged, "Give us your news." 

The lad looked uncomfortable accepting a seat in a Gentlehobbit's parlor, but at length he did sit, most likely too weary to do otherwise. 

"Is it..." Frodo found he could scarcely speak. "Is it Master Merry, Rob?" For that, he recalled, was the young groom's name. 

Rob nodded, reaching inside the breast of his fustian jacket for a letter that bore the Master of Buckland's ornate seal. Bilbo accepted the missive, but went so slowly in his breaking of the seal and unfolding of the page that it was all Frodo could do not to tear the epistle from the old Hobbit's hands, devouring the words with his own eyes. He found himself swaying, but it wasn't until a small hand caught hold of his and drew him to a chair that Frodo realized he'd come close to fainting in his fright. The little hand continued to pat Frodo's as it lay upon the arm of his chair, and grey eyes with only the faintest touch of blue peered into his face with great concern. 

Bilbo read the letter once, and then again with concentration before exclaiming, "Oh, the foolish lad!" 

*Not dead, then,* Frodo thought, *My Merry's not dead. Of course he is not,* he tried to reassure himself, *That's not what Gandalf told you would be--that you would have him for but seven short years, then nevermore.* 

Bilbo's face remained grave, however. "Merry's run off, Frodo," he said, with no trace of his customary heartiness. "They can only believe he meant to come here, but a coracle was found on the near bank of the Brandywine, quite a long way down from the Hall, and you know how swift the river is now, with the Autumn rains." 

Frodo struggled some moments before he found his voice again. 

"My Merry's not drowned," he said. "He's not. Gandalf said he would be my friend when both he and I were grown. Gandalf said." 

"I know, Frodo-lad," Bilbo answered gently. "But not even wizards are given the power to see all futures. And..." Bilbo folded the letter carefully. "Even were young Merry to have crossed the river, the Hall healers are deeply concerned. The illness Merry suffered was no light ailment, it was a fever of the brain, and would have required many days of quiet rest, good food and tender care to see him altogether right again. So far as they can tell, Merry took with him very little to eat and few warm clothes to wear. He would be quiet weak, they say, and the fever will likely make him muddled in his thoughts. He must be found as soon as ever may be." 

The room spun around Frodo then, as his heart cried out with utter despair. "We must do something! What can we do?" 

"All of Buckland has risen to the search," Bilbo told him, "and the Marish as well, even down so far as Stock and Rushy. Rory writes that, in addition, they have roused the Tooks. Should poor Merry make his way so far as the Green Hill Country, he will undoubtedly be found there." 

"But *we* must do something!" Frodo cried, beginning to tear off his fine town coat and waistcoat. "*I* must look for him, Uncle! Merry might hide from a stranger, but he will come out to me. Oh, Bilbo, what have I done?" 

"Frodo, lad." Bilbo drew up a chair across from his, taking Frodo's hands firmly in his own. "You cannot take this on yourself. If anyone must be blamed, let it be older and more foolish heads, who belittled the great love between you two lads. When Merry is found..." Bilbo paused, and Frodo blessed him that he did not say "if." "When Merry is found, we shall have him to stay here, and Esme too, if she will, until he is ready to return willingly to his home." 

Bilbo rose, setting a hand once more on Frodo's shoulder. "Tonight, dear lad, you must take your rest, and tomorrow we will join in the search." This being said, he took up a candle, lighting Frodo's way to bed. 

Once Bilbo had left, to walk young Samwise home and make arrangements for a bed at the Gamgees' for young Rob the groom, Frodo crawled shivering into his bed, cold despite the crackling fire and warm quilt that covered him. After what seemed hours he at last feel into uneasy slumbers, his dreams filled with rushing water, treacherous bogs, deep gullies and wild beats, each and every one of them a dire threat to his little cousin. 

Frodo woke at last with the first pink signs of dawn and dressed himself quickly in his warmest, sturdiest clothes. Listening hard for any sound of Bilbo stirring, he went then to the kitchen to poke up the fire and put the kettle on. When his guardian still did not appear, he began to pack up meals for the two of them to eat on their travels--though Frodo thought he had never in his life felt less like eating. 

Day after day they sought for Merry, in the hills and thickets of the Green Hill Country and the fields around Bywater and Hobbiton. The Brandybucks reached the banks of the river, all the way down to the Overbourne Marshes, and from thence inland, but not a trace of the little Hobbit could be found. The general belief, spoken by none, was that either the Brandywine had swept Merry's body away, or else that the small lad had fallen prey to some fierce creature in the wild. Then the search began to be, Frodo suspected, less for a live, frightened Hobbit-child, and more for the random scraps of clothing or bits of bone that might give some clue as to Merry's fate. 

On the evening of the fifth day, following Bilbo wearily home, Frodo at last admitted to himself that this must be: even his brave, resourceful Merry could not have lasted so long on his own, not without food or defense, with the nights beginning to grow chill as they were. By the time he reached Bag End, past nightfall, he could scarcely see for his weariness and tears, and when Hamfast the gardener met them in the kitchen with kind words and a kettle of Mistress Bell's nourishing stew, Frodo had not the heart to linger for either food or sympathy, but slouched down the corridor to fling himself, fully clothed, upon his bed, too spent even to weep anymore. 

In the midst of this misery he heard only distantly young Samwise's piping tones. Something seemed to have greatly excited the lad, and then Bilbo's far deeper voice called out, "Frodo! Frodo-lad, came at once!" 

*What can it be?* Frodo wondered. What was there in all the world now to cause such excitement--but then young Samwise burst into the room, uninvited, came at once to the bed and began to tug--quite forcefully for such a young Hobbit--at Frodo's hand, calling all the while, "Master Frodo, Master Frodo, you must get up, please! He's come here, to the garden!" 

"Who has come here?" Frodo asked wearily, at last consenting to sit. 

"The little one!" Samwise exclaimed. "Your cousin. I found him, all curled up on the bench betwixt the asters and the marigolds, like a wee hedge-pig under his cloak. I *found* him!" Sam repeated with bashful pride. 

Frodo burst from the room, nearly bowling Samwise over in his haste, racing into the garden where Bilbo knelt beside the bench in its ring of sunset-colored flowers, where a bundle of mud and bloody rags lay terribly still. 

Frodo threw himself to his own knees, and though he scarcely dared to hope that life remained in such a sadly injured little creature, reached out to brush the tangled curls from Merry's eyes. "Oh, Merry, Merry!" he cried, torn between grief and joy. "What have you *done,* you bad little Hobbit?" 

Merry whimpered softly, the most pitiable sound Frodo had ever heard, and then he could not stop himself from snatching Merry up in his arms, holding him close with no thought to the lad's injuries. Merry in turn--for of course it was Merry, how could he have ever doubted that his own most beloved small cousin would not make his way home to him, not dead after all but alive in his arms--snuggled in closer, rubbing his snub of a nose on Frodo's waistcoat, just as he always did. 

A moment later Merry pushed away, his small face turned upward to Frodo's, blue eyes intent, as if learning Frodo's features by heart. Frodo knew he was weeping but made no attempt to hide the tears, which made Merry's chin begin to tremble and his own bitter tears to flow. 

Merry tried to speak, in a tiny rasp of a voice utterly unlike his usual clear tones. It took Frodo some time to make out the words. 

"Please love me, Frodo," he pleaded. "Please love me still. It's been so hard to reach you." 

The Shire was a soft land, a gentle land, but not for a tiny lad, weak, defenseless and ill. Frodo held his small cousin tighter, too tightly he knew. He must surely be hurting Merry--but the question his cousin asked struck straight through his heart. 

"Love you, Merry?" he replied. "How can you say that?" 

What was it Cousin Esme always told her son? "You are my moonrise and my sunrise, you are all of that and more." He could not bear that Merry, even for an instant, should doubt his love. 

Frodo loosened his hold, cradling Merry gently as the little lad's head drooped backward and his eyes closed. 

Bilbo quickly took Merry from Frodo's arms. "Run ever so fast as you can, lad, to the healer's house--remember where I showed you? Tell Mr. Allrest he must come to Bag End at once, that the Master's heir has been found and lies in great need of his skill. Quickly, lad, go!" 

Frodo skidded down The Hill, all weariness forgotten, racing to the other end of Hobbiton, where Healer Allrest had his comfortable hole. Gasping, he pounded on the yellow door until his fists ached and the healer's voice was heard from indoors. "One moment, one moment, don't beat down my door!" 

A moment later Mr. Allrest stood looking down on Frodo from the circle of light beyond the threshold. 

"What is it, lad?" The healer's voice changed instantly from annoyance to concern. He reached to touch the front of Frodo's shirt where, he realized, there was blood. Little Merry's blood. 

Frodo found himself able to speak quite calmly; Merry needed him, after all. "It's my cousin, sir. The Master of Buckland's heir. He's been found." 

"Found, is he? But in what condition?" The healer frowned, but his look was one of concern, not anger. He was a youngish Hobbit with gingery hair and a long nose, tall and thin for their kind. "Step inside, lad," he added. "Whilst I fetch my valise." 

Frodo obeyed. Over by the fire, the healer's plump young wife and plump new baby regarded him with somber eyes. 

"Ah, here we are!" Mr. Allrest reappeared from a back room with a capacious brown-leather case in hand. "Lead on then, lad, as quickly as you may," he called to Frodo. 

Frodo's heart pounded wildly all the way up The Hill. What if they came too late? What if Merry was beyond aid? He burst into Bag End to find Bilbo in the snug small room beside his own, tucking Merry into the freshly-dressed bed. 

Healer Allrest went to work at once, snipping off Merry's ruined clothing with a pair of sharp shears. Merry did not awaken or resist, indeed Frodo had to watch quite carefully even to see the rise and fall of his cousin's chest as he drew breath. The healer clucked his tongue over the deep bloody gashes in Merry's left shoulder, and the way the ends of his little collarbone poked out through the skin--a sight that was nearly Frodo's undoing. All in all, the little lad was sadly pale and thin, scratched and bruised over much of his body, even down to his badly torn feet. 

"Clear the lads from the room," Mr. Allrest commanded. "They can make themselves useful putting the copper and the kettle on to boil. This little fellow must be thoroughly cleaned, lest his wounds suppurate." 

"Frodo, Sam," Bilbo said, in his usual cheerful voice. 

Frodo wanted to protest, to say he must not leave his Merry at any cost, but knew this was not the time to argue. "Yes, Uncle," he answered, and shepherded Samwise (who seemed to feel a proprietary interest in this little Hobbit he'd found) before him out of the room 

They'd soon poked up the fire and set the water to boil. While they were waiting, Frodo sat down in haste to pen a note to Cousin Esme. 

"Dearest Cousin," he wrote. 

I have good news for you! Merry is with us now, though he is in a sad state, I fear. Healer Allrest, whom Bilbo trusts greatly, is seeing to his hurts, and I am helping as best I can, for you know I love our little Merry as well as any brother. 

I hope that this note may bring you, Cousin Saradoc and all at Brandy Hall better cheer. 

Your loving cousin, 

Frodo Baggins. 

The note completed, he folded and sealed it, writing the direction in a clear hand. 

"I would be glad to carry it to the Post House, Master Frodo," Samwise told him, "For I don't mind the dark in the least." 

"Would you, Sam? That is very kind. You're a good lad." 

Sam smiled at this praise and blushed a little. Taking the letter firmly into his hand, he shot off through the kitchen door like an arrow from the bow, leaving Frodo alone with only his worries and fears for company--along with a kettle that seemingly refused to boil. 

"Aaaaaiiieeeee! No! No! No!" A truly heart-piercing cry, in what could only be Merry's voice, rose from the depths of Bag End, followed by a harsh, ragged sobbing. 

Frodo could bear no more. Taking the kettle down with the pot-hook and wrapping its hot handle with a cloth, he padded back to Merry's room, setting his burden on a little table just inside the door. 

"Frodo-lad!" Bilbo glanced at him sharply. "This is not a sight for you." 

Frodo shook his head. "No, Uncle. It's being away from him I can't bear." 

Poor Merry huddled in a corner of the bed, blue eyes wide with shock, pain and fear. "He hurted me, Frodo. He hurted me!" 

Frodo crawled up on the bed beside him, taking Merry's uninjured arm and drawing his small cousin into his lap. Merry hardly seemed to know where he was or what was happening, only that he was confused and in pain. "Hush, dearest. Hush. Do you know who's here?" 

"My Frodo." Merry's face pushed frantically at Frodo's chest, as if somehow he could shelter there and not hurt anymore. 

"Yes, dearest, that's right--it's your Frodo, here with you. And Cousin Bilbo, too. The Hobbit you don't know is Healer Allrest, and all he wants is to make you well. Wouldn't you like that, Merry dear?" 

"No hurt." His small hand twisted tightly into Frodo's shirt. 

"Merry, listen to me," Frodo said. "Mr. Allrest has to fix your poor shoulder, or it can't grow strong again, and I'm afraid that may hurt you very much, but I shall be here with you and hold you every moment, and I promise you that it will all be over soon. Do you trust me, my Mer?" 

Merry stared up at him, eyes slowly glazing over. 

"Bad Hobbit," he said finally, in a low, despondent voice. 

"Who's a bad Hobbit?" Frodo asked, heartbroken. 

Merry didn't answer, only bit at his lower lip. 

Mr. Allrest passed Frodo a small blue bottle. "See if you can't get him to drink this, lad. It will make your cousin sleepy and deaden the pain when I try again to set the bone." 

Frodo held the small flask to Merry's lips. "Will you drink, Merry? It will do you good. Drink it for me?" 

Merry's eyes flashed up at him again, and for a moment Frodo thought all Merry's Brandybuck stubbornness would surge to the fore. But instead Merry sipped halfheartedly. Half the liquid dribbled out of the little lad's mouth, but he swallowed heavily, making a face at the flavor. In time, he grew heavy and limp in Frodo's arms, his eyes half open, mouth slack. 

Healer Allrest stooped again to set the broken collarbone, and thought Merry stiffened, he did not cry out or pull away. 

When it all was over, Merry wept silently in his embrace, and the pit of Frodo's stomach felt quite sick, but he only murmured gently, "That's my good lad, Merry. That's my brave lad." He laid his cousin gently back on the pillows. "You said he needed to be washed, Mr. Allrest?" Frodo's voice trembled, but he would be brave. For his Merry, he would be brave. 

Tenderly, he helped the Healer to clean and bandage the small battered body, holding Merry carefully whilst the healer stitched shut the tears in Merry's shoulder with boiled horsehair. Merry moved not at all through any of this, but lay with his eyes half shut, even when they bound his left arm tightly to his body. Frodo was able to rouse him enough to drink a few sips of a tea Mr. Allrest said would help with his fever, but after that he pushed away the cup and would take no more. Frodo looked a the healer with concern. Usually, Merry was a mischievous but cooperative lad. He'd get into scrapes through his natural curiosity or recklessness, and had been known to hide unwanted foods--such as the much-despised sprouts--in his napkin or, once, memorably, in his cousin's cup of milk, but he was also eager to please, especially those he was fond of. 

"Try a little more, dearest," Frodo urged him. "Only a little. For your Frodo?" 

Merry only shook his head, burying his face once more in the front of Frodo's waistcoat and falling into a fitful sleep. 

At half-nine, Healer Allrest departed and Bilbo called Frodo to second breakfast. He devoured his toast, sausages and eggs ravenously, suddenly unable to remember when he'd eaten last. Not since tea the day before, he thought, though even that was a hazy memory. Hungry though he was, though, the thought of little Merry alone made him anxious. 

Bilbo seemed to understand his need, for he didn't stop Frodo when he rose, unexcused, from the half-cleared plate of his third helping to rush down the corridor to his cousin's room. 

All through the day and into the evening he held Merry gently in his arms, lying beside him on the bed, now and then stroking Merry's curls or the tips of his ears. All through the day, too, he tried to get Merry to take bits of nourishment, sips of broth or apple juice, even water, increasingly concerned about how little he could convince the young Hobbit to swallow. He felt, somehow, as if in his terrible journey Merry had come torn loose from his proper life and nothing Frodo could think of would attach him back into it again. 

Some time in his vigil he feel asleep, and was not surprised, really, when he woke up alone in his own room, quite unable to force himself, at the moment, to go back to Merry again. Instead, he pulled the covers over his head and sobbed bitterly into his pillow. If his Merry did live, if he could not convince him to catch hold of life again, where would he himself be? 

When morning came, Frodo lay a long time on his back, gazing up at the smooth, curved plaster of the ceiling. There, between the beams, was a crack that looked like the head of a duck, and his first thought was that he would have to point it out to Merry--but then he remembered the still, silent Merry in the room beside him and threw an arm across his eyes. He couldn't bear it. He could not. 

Again, he wept, but this time his tears were sad and silent. 

In time, however, Frodo became disgusted with himself. How would working himself into such a state help Merry, or anyone? Where was his own Brandybuck stubbornness? He rose, washed and dressed carefully and went in search of Bilbo. 

Frodo found him in the kitchen, pouring out tea for Cousin Esme, who smiled at him through he shadows in her eyes. Wordlessly, Frodo flung his arms round his cousin's neck, squeezing her close as Esme's arms closed tightly around his waist in return. He felt, somehow, that he ought to tell her he was sorry, though he couldn't think precisely for what, or find the words to say. 

After a moment, Esme pulled him down beside her, Frodo's head on her shoulder, her fingers stroking gently through his still-damp curls. "Bilbo has been telling me how brave you've been, Frodo," she told him kindly, her voice rough with tears. 

Frodo didn't know what to say. "He's my Mer," he responded at last, a bit more gruffly than he intended. 

"Yes," Esme answered, "Perhaps even more so than we'd thought." She released Frodo then to take the cup Bilbo offered her. "We've been trying to think what to do, Frodo, and you're old enough and wise enough, I believe, to share your thoughts with us." 

"Don't send him away please, Uncle Bilbo," Frodo said at last, trying his hardest to keep his voice steady. "Not with things as they are. I knew he's been naughty, and caused a great deal of trouble to everyone." 

"Most of all to himself, poor lad," Bilbo said thoughtfully. 

"And I know he's a dreadful bother for you, but I can look after him. I can." Frodo rubbed hard at his own eyes, determined that this time, at least, he would not weep. "I'm truly thankful for all you've given me, Uncle. I truly am, but how can I let my Merry have suffered all this for nothing?" 

"Easy, lad," Bilbo responded, squeezing Frodo's shoulder comfortingly. "No one's thinking of sending your cousin away from you--unless that is what *you* wanted." 

"What *I* wanted?" Frodo couldn't believe his ears. "When would I ever want my Merry sent away from me? Cousin Esme!" 

"It was thought," Esme said thoughtfully, "That you might *like* some time away on your own, to make friends with lads your own age, to play the sorts of games grown lads play. You've always been lovely with our Merry, but I'm well aware of the sort of demands he makes on your time. What of your studies, and your own interests, Frodo?" 

"But Merry is my friend, cousin. My dearest friend. And someday we will both be grown and our different ages will not matter so. How can I push him away now, when he needs me, and expect him to love me still in twenty years? Can't you see? Love isn't so easily found." 

The two grown Hobbits sat looking at him quietly, until Bilbo said at last, in a soft voice quite unlike his usual one. "Frodo, lad, I think you underestimate your ability to make others love you." 

Esme only squeezed his hand. 


	9. Frozen

Chapter 9 

Buckland - 1484 SR 

"Is it too late in the year to be lying out on the ground as we are?" Pippin asks, obviously in a mood to chatter. 

"We're not on the ground," I answer dreamily, "We're on a blanket, and rather a nice, thick one at that. And we are too full of picnic still to go traipsing all the way back to the Hall. Besides which, I like to watch the sky." 

Pip shifts a bit, getting comfortable, and raises his head off my stomach to take a long pull from his cider-bottle. "Ah, good stuff that! Did you press it here?" 

"It's Saradoc's," I answer. "Sometimes I think he prefers cider to beer." 

"Does he really?" Pip's head flops back down. "How curious! You know, Mer, if you ate more, you'd make a better pillow. In the old days, when you were nice and plump, I'd be able to lie here for hours, leaning on you. There's a cloud that looks like a duck." 

"Where?" I ask, stroking my fingers through his flyaway curls. 

"Just there. Beside the cloud that looks like Minas Tirith." 

"That's not Minas Tirith. It's clearly Edoras. I can see the Golden Hall." 

"We'll have to go soon," Pip says. 

He's correct. I have signed all the papers that must be signed, given away the treasures, said the goodbyes. Even the ponies we'll ride are ready in my stables, and the sturdy packhorse, a descendant of good old Bill the Pony. All that remains is our provisions and those few possessions we'll take with us--no need to carry much. Most of what we'll require to finish our days will be provided us, I know. 

"Yes, Pip," I answer softly. 

"Only, there's one thing..." 

It's not like him to sound so hesitant, which lets me know exactly what it is he means to ask. "Must you?" I say. I don't like Diamond. I have never liked Diamond, even if I do love her son Faramir. How dare she have treated my dearest, dearest Pip as if he was nothing? How dare she have taken, for such a long time, all the spring from his step and the sparkle from his eyes? 

It is not in me to actually hate another Hobbit--at least I like to think it isn't, but with Diamond I find I come terribly close to breaking that rule. She was aptly named, that one: a sparkling beauty with a hard, cold heart. 

"I ought to," Pip answers, his voice trembling a little. "You know I ought to." 

"Promise me you won't let her make you feel sad? Promise me, Pip?" I tug softly on his hair. "For you are everything that is good and fine in the world, and I would not have you see yourself reflected in her eyes." 

Pippin flips over, his sharp chin digging into my chest. "Shall I spit on my hand, then?" he asks, and laughs. 

"If it will make you keep your word." I crane my neck a bit to look into his eyes. "Tell me it's only a goodbye, and I'll believe you." 

"It's only a goodbye," he tells me. "Honestly, Mer, I don't think she can hurt me anymore. I'll say the words, and then we'll come away together, you and I, and never think of her anymore." 

"I believe you," I answer softly. "I believe everything you say." 

Pippin turns slowly onto his back once more, groping upwards until he can take my hand. "There's a cloud that looks like an Oliphaunt. But not a fierce one. A nice little baby Oliphaunt." 

And the thing is, he's right. 

***************************************************************************** 

FROZEN 

I. Bag End - 1 Foreyule, 1389 SR 

Merry loved best to sit quietly in the windowseat of Frodo's room with a cushion behind his sore shoulder and his eyes fixed on the soothing grey of the sky. Sometimes he would spy a bird dart across the greyness, or a tendril of smoke, or a cloud, but he liked it best when nothing disturbed the perfect dull circle. 

Something inside him had gone very still, so still he wondered sometimes if he was really meant to have died. Everyone told him, after all, what a marvelous thing it was that he'd managed to remain alive. He didn't like when they said that: it made him feel peculiar, and even further removed from the world. Nothing he tasted or touched seemed exactly real. 

"What are you doing, Mer?" Frodo always asked, when he found Merry so. "Still counting birds?" 

"Yes," Merry would agree, because it was polite to answer, even though talking hurt his chest--and though, in truth, he counted nothing. Maybe he'd lost some terribly important part of himself on the hard road from Buckland, and he wished someone would tell him how to get it back again, or even that he had the words to know how to ask. 

He knew he worried Frodo, and Bilbo too, and his dear mum had believed she was doing so little good for him that at last she'd gone sadly back to Brandy Hall and her duties there. Merry had meant to cry when she left, had felt like crying, but he hadn't. 

On the first day of Foreyule, however, Frodo did not ask the question about the birds. Instead, he sat quietly beside Merry on the seat, watching the stillness of his eyes. 

"What is it you really look for, Mer?" Frodo asked at last. 

"Nothing," Merry answered, truthfully this time, and Frodo, being Frodo, seemed to understand, as the others did not. 

"I felt that way after my mum and dad died," he said. "I wanted there to be nothing, neither noise nor distraction. I did not want people to try to make me get over it, and feel well again, when I wasn't ready. Is that how you feel, Mer?" 

"I don't know," Merry replied thoughtfully. He sounded older to himself, and sometimes he caught a look in his cousin's eyes, as if Frodo was regretting ever having wished that Merry would grow up a bit and stop pestering him so frequently. Frodo looked now as if he wished to be pestered. 

Because now, Merry knew, he demanded nothing. His face seemed to have forgotten how to smile, and his eyes to light. He spoke quietly and politely when spoken to, but volunteered almost nothing. He did not fidget, or spill, or break things, or race around with mad glee. He did not gobble as much of any treat as he was allowed and then try to charm Frodo out of *his* share. He no longer recognized his own face in the looking-glass, because it was white, and the only brightness in his eyes came from the low fever that wouldn't seem to go away, any more than the pain would leave him. 

Frodo stroked his curls softly, and Merry wished he could do something to drive the worry out of his beloved cousin's eyes. He felt sometimes that he could almost read Frodo's thoughts: is all this because he's still unwell? Is it because he isn't eating, and a young Hobbit that doesn't eat is a sad creature indeed? Is it something I've said or done? Or *not* said or *not* done? 

The worst had been that morning. When Merry had neatly folded the old tatty blanket he'd had since babyhood and set it far in the back of one of wardrobe drawers, Frodo looked as if he would cry, and the tears had actually spilled down when Merry returned to his bed for his old rabbit Rags and laid the soft toy on top of the blanket. The noise the drawer made going closed had sounded to Merry like the lid going on a coffin, a noise he'd heard once, that had made a great impression on him. 

He'd then made his bed tidily, the way his mum liked him to do, but he rarely did, and then had gone into Frodo's room to work his awkward way up into the windowseat. 

"You know, Mer," Frodo said, "I have a surprise for you. Next week, Bilbo's taking us on a visit to Tuckborough, to stay with your Uncle Paladin and Auntie Eglantine and our cousins. We'll have Yule there, and perhaps some young Hobbit I know might also have a birthday party?" 

"That's nice," Merry said listlessly. 

"Your mum and dad will be there too, Merry. I'm sure you'll be glad to see them again. And soon after we get there, if should be time for our new cousin to arrive. That will be exciting, don't you think?" 

"My shoulder hurts," Merry murmured, shifting slightly--which it did. The ache seemed to go all the way down into the pit of his stomach, and it never stopped, night or day. And earlier, before he'd been allowed to get up, Mr. Allrest had been to see him. 

"Merry," Frodo said. 

Merry glanced up at him, hating that he'd made such a desperate expression appear on his cousin's face. He tried to squeeze some life into his voice. "That healer was here, Frodo. He poked at me!" 

"*That healer,* Mer? Mr. Allrest quite likely saved your life! But, I must say, he's not best pleased with you, naughty lad. Your shoulder hurts because it's not healing properly, and it's not healing properly because you don't eat or take your medicine as you should." Suddenly, Frodo seemed to go from sad to rather cross, and Merry shrank back deep as he could into the seat. "And it breaks my heart to see you sit here so sadly and not know how to help! I miss my Merry-lad!" 

Merry looked at him a moment in silence, then slid across the cushion to climb up into Frodo's lap. "I'm still your Merry-lad, aren't I, Frodo?" he asked, wondering what it was they all wanted of him. "I've tried to be very, very good so you'd love me again after I was so naughty. Haven't I been good, Frodo?" 

"Merry, oh, Merry." Frodo squeezed him gently and bent to kiss his curls. "Dearest little Merry. Whoever said I wanted you to be good like that? Were you the naughtiest little Hobbit in Middle-earth, I would still love you best. You will always be my Mer, and all I want is for you to be full of life and fun again, and make me smile as you once did." 

Merry gave a little sigh, settling further into his cousin's lap as he pondered these words. 

"Tell me," he said, suddenly, not even knowing what he meant to ask, "About Gandalf and when I was born. I like that story, because it gets sad, but then it's happy again." 

"Like you're going to be?" Frodo asked. 

"Like I'm going to be," Merry assured him, settling in to listen. 

When Frodo finished his tale, Merry sat quietly, a furrow of deep thought creasing his brow. 

"Do you think you will have to?" he asked, after a long while. 

"What's that, Mer?" 

"Leave the Shire. Travel to the ends of the world. Do you think the Valar will ask that of you, Frodo?" 

"Oh, I shouldn't think so," Frodo answered brightly. "I think they generally use Big People or Elves for that sort of thing." 

"Except for Bilbo," Merry said. "I think I might like to have adventures like Bilbo. Only not with goblins." Merry shivered. "Goblins frighten me." 

Frodo laughed. "Well, then, we shall have to keep you clear of goblins, Wargs and Orcs. But I thought there wasn't anything that frightened you, Mer." 

"Oh, I was frightened all the time in the forest, Frodo," Merry told him. "And then I was frightened I would die and never see you again. I made believe you were holding my hand. If you have to go out into the wide world, you won't forget me, will you?" 

"Never," Frodo promised. "Never, ever, Merry." 

Then the two of them spat on their hands and slapped them together to make the promise right and tight. 

That afternoon at tea, Merry drank all his milk, and after he'd finished his first crumpet with butter and strawberry jam in only six bites, he asked Bilbo for a second one. 

II. The Tookland - 8 Foreyule, 1389 SR 

From Hobbiton to Tuckborough was not a long journey, nothing like the journey from Buckland, but Merry still had to demand several times were they there yet, or growing near, and when would they arrive, because they'd been traveling for ages, and what if his new cousin came while they were taking so very long? 

This made Frodo laugh, though Bilbo looked rather as if he'd had enough of questions for that time, and of the young Hobbit who asked them. 

Merry was simply too excited to keep still. He bounced a bit on the seat, but that hurt his shoulder so that he had to sit quietly a moment holding his sore arm. And then he craned about, trying to see everything at once because it was pretty here in the Tookland, so green and hilly and full of wild trees and orchards and fields that grew different things than were generally grown round Hobbiton or at home, and because he'd never come into the Tookland from this direction before. 

He leaned so far, trying to see, that he spilled himself over the side of the pony trap, and would have fallen under the wheels if Frodo had not quickly grabbed the back of his jacket and jerked him back up where he belonged. This rough-but-necessary handling hurt Merry's shoulder again, quite badly this time, and he subsided into stillness on his cousin's lap until they arrived at the Great Smials. 

There Uncle Dinny came out to great them, Pimmie and Pervinca hanging off each of his hands, while Pearl walked very grown-up-like behind them with her nose in a book. 

As soon as the trap stopped, Pim and Pervinca let loose of their father, running the rest of the distance down the drive, and Merry couldn't help but jump to the ground, racing to meet them halfway. All three of them leapt and shouted and finally ended up tumbling together like puppies on the drive, laughing madly until Merry's shoulder gave a terrible throb-crack and he remembered why he'd been ordered not to greet his cousins with his usual glee, and why all the grown-ups had been shouting at him to stop. 

He gave a small squawk of pain and lay very still on the grass beside the path, trying to tell his shoulder it must stop hurting and not ruin his fun. Above, he could see Pimmie's eyes had gone wide, and Pervinca was sucking her thumb. 

Merry was glad then of Pearl's gentle touch as she sat him up, taking great care not to jar the places that were sore. Still, Merry could not help the tears that flooded his eyes, both from the sudden pain and the thought that he might not be able to join, all this holiday, in the rough-and-tumble games he loved, for his girl-cousins were just as good at that sort of thing as any lad. 

But now Pimmie, who never cried, ever, would tease him for blubbing, and everyone would treat him like Cousin Bilbo's best dishes, the ones he wasn't allowed to touch because they were too delicate. 

Merry hated to feel delicate. And he didn't like to be teased, unless it was in good fun. 

Only Pim didn't tease him. Instead she said, "Merry?" and her eyes got even wider. "Da, I didn't mean to break him!" 

"You didn't break me," Merry wanted to say, but his head seemed to be getting very far from his feet, and it wasn't until Uncle Dinny picked him up that things began to go right again. 

"Now then, my little lad," Uncle Dinny said, in his deep voice, smiling all over his face that was just like Merry's mum's, only somehow a lad-face rather than a lass's. It comforted Merry that his Uncle did not seem to find things like cracked shoulders disturbing in the least, but bore his nephew away to the Great Smials infirmary with the same air of good cheer he'd worn when Merry arrived. 

The healers there felt all over Merry's shoulder carefully, deciding that he'd unknit slightly what had not been very well knit to begin with, but hadn't knocked anything out of true. They gave him a spoonful of something that tasted like slightly over-ripe grapes, strapped him up tightly and sent him off into the world--or at least to the spot in the corridor where his cousins waited, their numbers supplemented now by Reginard Took, who was almost Frodo's age, and Ferdibrand Took, a year younger than Merry, as well as his more distant cousins, Fredegar and little Estrella Bolger, who looked up at Merry with tears in her big, dark eyes. 

Merry put on his best smile, embarrassed somewhat by his earlier weeping, and tried to make light of his injury--though in truth his shoulder throbbed so badly it even made his teeth ache. "Hullo," he said as brightly as he could, and for several moments was bombarded with questions about how he'd gone down the river, and what had it been like alone in the dark wood, and however had he escaped from the owl? Merry tried to make his answers exciting, like something from a tale, because to say that he'd been scared and sick and cried a great deal would have been disappointing for his cousins. 

They all seemed to approve very much of his adventures, but soon someone (Fredegar, most likely, who had an instinct for such things) realized that tea-time had come, and was promised to be especially nice, as a greeting for the new arrivals, and so the cousins (all but Frodo and Reginard, who had long since escaped into the relative quiet of the library) were running in a pack to see what the special treats might include. 

Merry found then that not only couldn't he keep up, he didn't have the heart in him to try. Instead, he rather wished himself back at Bag End, in Frodo's orderly room, in the windowseat, with the comfortingly grey sky above him. 

Pearl had stopped and turned back to wait for him. "Never mind, Merry," she said kindly, reaching down her hand to take his. "Come say hullo to mummy instead, and I'll see if I can't find an especially special treat for you." 

Still downhearted, Merry followed until they reached Pearl's family's new rooms, close by those of the Thain. They were much grander than the old ones, he noticed, which had been rather shabby, though very homey and comfortable. These were comfortable enough too, but it was the kind of comfort more suitable to grown-up Hobbits than to the sort of small lad inclined to leave sticky fingerprints. Past the good parlor, though, he was happy to find a nicely-worn nursery with a large playroom (where Pearl left him, promising to return soon) equipped with quite a surfeit of lovely toys, including a very realistically carved wooden dragon whose wings could be made to flap and wooden fire come out of its mouth by the pulling of a string. 

And also, in two rocking chairs by the nursery fire, sat his Auntie Egg and his own dear mum, knitting. 

The moment he noticed them, Merry gave a cry of delight and threw himself across the room, remembering his hurt shoulder only just before the moment of impact but still managing to stop in time. "Mummy!" he shouted. "I missed you! I missed you more than anything!" 

Esme's face broke into the brightest of smiles--reminding Merry that he hadn't been very warm with her, when last they'd been together. "Oh, my sweet Merry-lad," she called, stretching out her arms to boost him up as he wriggled into her lap, tangling himself very badly in her knitting wool in the process. Merry leaned his head upon her bosom, turning his face up to hers to be kissed, drinking in her softness and her nice mum-smell before he slid down again to a bestow a kiss upon Auntie Egg, who was his favorite aunt, even though she'd been a Banks before her marriage, and not a Took or Brandybuck. Or even a Baggins. He thought, briefly, of settling on her lap for a cuddle, for in normal times Auntie Egg was even softer than his mum, and nicely round, perfectly made for cuddling. 

Then he realized his auntie really hadn't much lap left just now, and what she had was far too close to the kicking baby. Still, Merry was curious. "May I touch?" he asked, politely, and when his auntie nodded, laid his small hand on her belly. The skin felt very tight, under her clothes, and he could feel little flips of motion through the tightness. 

"He's almost done now, isn't he?" Merry asked, awestruck. He wondered if the baby could hear him, so close to the surface did it seem. "HULLO BABY!" he called. "It's your Cousin Merry. Did you want to come out for Yule?" 

Auntie Egg laughed. "And what does he say back to you, dearest Merry?" 

Merry made as if to listen. "He says, 'Yes, please,' but he thinks he'll wait until Second Yule and the New Year, so as not to interrupt my birthday party." 

"What a thoughtful lad," Esme exclaimed. "I'm sure you two will be great friends, with your birthdays only a day apart. Will you each have a party, or only one that lasts for two days?" 

"The second one would be best, I think," Merry answered. He loved his mum's gentle teasing. Carefully, he climbed up into her lap once more, leaning into her warmth. He still tired quickly, and the incident with his cousins had left him shaken. Esme untangled him gently from her yarn, rolling up the ball again and setting it and her needles aside, the better to wrap her arms around her son. Slowly, they rocked together, Merry watching Auntie Egg's slender needles move in their rapid, clacking dance, the little hat of blue wool she was knitting taking shape as if by magic. 

He was glad, then, not to have gone with his cousins. Much as he loved them, just then their noise and motion seemed to much for him and for now he preferred this gentle stillness. 

But only for now. 

III. Great Smials - 18 Foreyule 1389 

Merry was afraid of finding himself left behind in the next weeks, as Frodo and Reginard Took, both quiet souls, discovered they'd much in common and spent hours in the Smials library poring over maps and ancient texts, or rambling the frost-covered hills. Merry would see his cousin at First Breakfast, and every night Frodo would sing to him or tell him stories, but his mum had asked him specially to allow the older lad time for his own pursuits, and Merry had promised (and Esme had even performed the hand-spitting ritual with him, because she was, after all, the best of all mums) and therefor needed to live up to his word, because he was a Brandybuck and a Hobbit of honor. 

Still, he often missed Frodo, especially since his older cousin was quite good at coming up with activities of a quiet nature that would not have hurt, but were still interesting. All the younger cousins ran and shouted constantly. They leaped and rolled and crashed into one another and their favorite words seemed to be, "I dare you"--although their dares were never mean or terrifying, like Berilac's. 

To make matters worse, Merry was accustomed to being something of a ringleader in mischief or adventures, and a natural captain at games. To be the weak one, the awkward one, the one who easily tired was such a foreign thing to him that he refused to accept it as real, and instead pushed himself harder then he'd thought possible, even during his journey from Buckland, attempting to keep up with the others in activities that ought to have been easy and enjoyable, but instead sent him to bed every night aching and trembling with exhaustion. 

Normally, his mum would have noticed and put and end to it, finding her son other pastimes, but as Auntie Egg was not allowed much on her feet these last weeks before the baby came, and there were a number of preparations to be made for the holidays, she seemed to be always running about the Smials with a pack of other aunties or cousins, a flurried look on her face and her plaits falling down. Merry didn't want to trouble her, and he most especially did not want to be left all on his own. 

Two weeks before Yule the first snow of the year fell, large, fluffy flakes like down from a pillow to begin with, and then, later, a blizzard of tiny snowflakes that, despite their size, seemed to pile up amazingly, the wind whipping round through the whiteness in dizzying swirls. All night and the following day the snow fell from a sky that shone like pewter, and the air smelled clean yet slightly sour, like freshly-sliced lemons. 

The following day dawned sharply clear and very cold, though the sun shone and the sky was blue as summer, casting oddly glowing shadows on the mounded drifts. So cold was the air that all the young Hobbits save poor Freddy Bolger (who tended to wallow somewhat) could run on the hard-frozen surface of the snow, shouting loudly to hear their voices echo on the frigid air and playing at being Elves--though nothing less Elflike than half-a-dozen pink-cheeked, hooded and mittened Hobbit lads and lasses could hardly be imagined. The game of Elves changed somehow to a game of frozen tag, small Hobbit bodies skidding madly on the icy crust. 

When Esmeralda called them in to luncheon, Merry would have been glad enough to respond--he was hot inside his warm clothing (though his feet felt frozen), tired and very thirsty, but Pimmie decided they ought to have an adventure instead and pretend not to have heard. No one wanted to admit to being cold and hungry, and so they followed her through the scrap of hill and forest that separated the Smials from Tuckborough proper, where the millpond had frozen over satisfactorily. 

For more than an hour they amused themselves sliding on the ice, leathery soles gliding beautifully over the hardness, laughing when they fell--except for Merry, for whom the continual jars to his shoulder soon had him biting his lip, his heart beating fast from the pain. 

It was Freddy Bolger who suggested a game of Crack-the-Whip, with Freddy himself, the heaviest, as the anchor and one-handed Merry as the tip. 

The first three cracks went delightfully, everyone skidding too fast to see when the whip broke, but still managing to stay on their feet. On the fourth crack, Pimmie, running next to Merry, tripped herself up on a lump in the ice and without meaning to, let loose of his hand. 

Merry flew, balance gone, knowing he'd no hope whatsoever of stopping his flight or breaking his fall. He landed hard, face-down on a spot where the ice was weakest, crashing through into a dark cold that shocked the breath from his lungs. 

He plunged deeper and deeper into the dark water, and when at last he found the presence of mind to kick himself upward, he struck his head on a shelf of ice. His eyes felt frozen, blurred with the cold, and if it hadn't been for Pearl catching hold of his collar from behind, he might have headed blindly in entirely the wrong direction, not toward the hole, but away from it. 

"Merry!" The ever-resourceful Pearl slapped his back and Merry coughed out a good quart of chill pond water. From the blow and his bad landing, his shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat, but the rest of him couldn't be felt at all. 

"All of you," Pearl commanded. "It's time to run along home now." She and Ferdibrand boosted Merry to his feet, while Estella sobbed, "You killded my Merry!" and Pervinca cried too, because she was chilled and ravenous and late for her nap. 

A subdued group of cousins headed back to the Smials, most of them so damp and cold they couldn't even shiver. 

"This is all your fault," Pearl hissed to Pimmie, who snapped back, "You're the eldest!" 

Freddy took off his coat and wrapped it around Merry's shoulders, whispering worriedly, "Merry's blue. That can't be right, can it?" 

The cousins sneaked inside through the most remote door they could locate, debating in whispers how they could possibly find warm, dry clothes without alerting their parents to the fact that they'd been playing, unsupervised, on the forbidden millpond when they were meant to be eating luncheon. 

They huddled around the nursery fire, so painfully cold that nearly all the morning's fun was extinguished in their minds, Pearl and Ferdy began stripping soggy mufflers and jackets off the youngest Hobbits, rubbing their small, chilled hands to warm them, until Estella and Pervinca soon appeared quite warm and happy again, and began to clamor for their tea. Pimpernel, perhaps feeling a sense of responsibility for Merry's condition, began to undress him as well, but he whimpered, pulling away. 

"Merry," Pearl came over to help. "You're soaked through. We need to get your wet things off so that you can warm up again. Be a good lad now." 

In answer, he sat down hard on the hearthrug, not meaning, really, to be uncooperative--his legs simply wouldn't hold him up anymore. 

Pearl frowned down at him, an expression of concern on her pretty Tookish face. "Pimmie," she said, "Run and fetch the quilt from my bed. Freddy, go try to find Frodo. And Ferdy...you take the little ones to tea." 

Pervinca's stormy face brightened considerably. She took Ferdibrand's hand and with a look of cheerful expectation, stretching out her other hand to little Estella, but Estella only shook her head, planting herself firmly by Merry's side. 

"Won't go 'way from my Merry," she said, her normally soft eyes defiant. 

"Oh, very well then," Pearl snapped, cross with worry. "Stay here and starve if you like. She snatched the quilt from Pimmie's hands and began without further ado to strip Merry down despite his protests. He cried out when she touched his shoulder and pain seared all across his chest and down his left arm, but Pearl was merciless, not ceasing her labors until Merry was down to bluish-pale skin and underdrawers. She wrapped him tightly in the blanket, taking him into her lap as close to the fire as the two of them could stand, while Estella lay her head against Merry's good arm, her small hand wriggling in beneath the quilt to wrap round Merry's fingers. 

"I won't be blamed for this, Merry," Pearl muttered, "So you just warm up now, like a good lad." 

"What if he won't?" Pimmie asked. "Do you think we'll be punished? I'll bet mum and da won't let you stay at Laburnum's." 

Pearl had been looking forward for some weeks to a whole fortnight's Yuletide visit at the Boffin family hole with her bosom friend, Laburnum Boffin. 

"I *hate* being the eldest," Pearl answered bitterly. "Why should I be expected to show good Hobbitsense, when all this was *your* fault really? What am I meant to do, with a sister such as you?" 

"I can't help that I have the best ideas," Pimmie retorted--which was true--Pimpernel had a way of making even the maddest ideas seem interesting and fun. "And you just won't admit that you still like a good lark as well as any of us. You're not really so very grown up as all that, Pearl. You're just as much a Took as we are, and you still love adventures." 

Pearl sniffed, but Pimmie persisted. "Merry won't tell on us anyway. He's every bit as naughty as we are." 

"Where has Freddy got himself to, anyway?" Pearl wondered crossly. 

"Probably smelled food and forgot," Pimmie opined, and peered closely into Merry's face. "I think Merry's better. See, Pearl, he's stopped shivering and fallen asleep. We could tuck him up snugly into bed for a nap and go find our own tea. I'm absolutely starving." 

"I don't know," Pearl said, frowning down at the bundle that contained her young cousin. "He's still quite cold, Pim." 

"But he's gone floppy, Pearl. And listen--he's snoring. Mum told us to look out for Merry, make sure he took plenty of naps. He's resting now, and most likely that's just what he needs. If it makes you feel better, you can bring him something especially nice for tea once he wakes up. I'll even help you." 

"I suppose..." Pearls said hesitantly. "Mum did say he could do with lots of rest, as he's just getting over being ill." 

"So, there you are." Pim leapt to her feet. "Now put him to bed and let's go, before the boys eat up every scrap and morsel." 

Pearl set Merry down gently on the rug, climbed to her own feet and picked him up again. With Pimmie and Estella trailing, she carried Merry to his room, tucking him up in bed. Merry immediately sank even deeper into sleep. 

"Sweet dreams, dear Merry." Pearl kissed the ends of her fingers and touched the kiss to Merry's brow. She and Pimmie hurried then to their shared room, unlaced one another swiftly as they could from their damp frocks and into warm new ones and raced, hand-in-hand to the Little Tea Room, having utterly forgotten Estella. 

IV. 

The youngest Hobbit padded back into Merry's room, pushed a stool up to the bedside and used it to climb carefully to the bed. She wasn't accustomed to Merry being so still--really, when she thought of her dear distant cousin it was as a picture in her mind of sunlight flashing on water, brightness in constant, dancing motion. His smiles and his laughter sent a warm fluttery feeling through her stomach. For all that, he wasn't like the other lads, impatient with her for her littleness, or tending to tease her because she was too young to understand much of what happened around her, no matter how she tried. Estella always tried to understand things. 

Just now, though, Estella had a different sort of feeling in her stomach, one that had nothing to do with missing second breakfast and luncheon, or wanting tea. 

Cautiously, not wanting to disturb her cousin if he was truly sleeping peacefully, she laid her small hand on Merry's cheek. How cold he was! Cold as the water and snow outside, nothing like his usual warm self. In her heart, Estella knew that could not be right, and she wept a few tears, unable to decide what she should do. Pearl was quite a big lass, and if she thought Merry all right to be left, most likely he was. Still, she could not entirely ignore the sensation of badness and things going wrong. 

The best thing to do, she decided, was to find Merry's mum, because mummies were always wise about their little lads and lasses. 

Estella slipped down from the bed, using her stool again. She knew her cousins would be angry that she'd told, and most likely she'd be punished--perhaps the Grandfather would not even fill her hood this Yule--but she would take that chance. No harm must come to her Merry. 

She walked a long way along the corridors, searching for Cousin Esme, and hoping she wouldn't lose herself in the Smials. At last she discovered Esme in a storeroom along with Great-Aunt Donnabella, Cousin Genehilda and her very own mum. They'd a tableful of quite interesting-looking items before them, over which Esme quickly cast a cloth. 

"Why, hullo, my love," Estella's mum, Rosamunda, said. "Where have you been all day? With your cousins?" 

Estella nodded, suddenly shy with the four sets of adult eyes upon her. Timidly, she reached out to wrap her fingers round Cousin Esme's thumb. "Come see Merry?" she whispered. 

"What's that, sweetness?" Esme bent low, until her face was near Estella's. "What did you say about Merry?" 

"Merry got cold," Estella told her, in a slightly stronger voice. "Come see Merry?" 

"My son!" Esme said lightly. "Sometimes I wonder if his Hobbitsense will ever grow. I suppose he's been tempted out into the snow, and now his shoulder is hurting him from the cold." Despite her laughing words, a crease formed between her brows and she hurried along the corridor too swiftly for Estella to keep up. 

By the time she'd nearly reached the nursery, Esme was already on the way out again, her son caught up in her arms, bedclothes trailing as she ran. 

She'd been right then. Fetching Merry's mum had been the right thing to do, and though she supposed she'd been brave and clever, Estella had never felt less proud of herself in her young life. 

She sank down in the corridor with her skirts puddled round her small, furry feet, and wept. 

To be continued... 

. 


	10. Frozen, Part Two

A/N: First off, thank you to all the lovely people who send feedback and an especially big THANK YOU to Marigold, for making my little story one of her Best Bets. I'm flattered more than words can say. Eiluj, my thanks you for all your kind comments--yes, it does look as if I'll probably be writing this forever.g As a friend said to me the other day, "How big IS this book Frodo gave Merry? Does Merry write really small? Hee. Rabidsamfan, thank you as well--I'm glad you like the mixture of old and new here. Pipwise Brandygin, JenniGellerBing and Monkey5s, thank you, thank you ever so much! 

On with the story... 

FROZEN - Pt. 2 

V. Great Smials - 1389 SR 

When Esmeralda was a young Hobbit, not so very much older than her son was now, her father, Adalgrim Took, had owned the prettiest pony in all the Shire. Snow white he was, with a mane and tail that rippled like waterfalls and sparks of starlight in his eyes. And, oh, but she had loved that pony, longing with all her heart to ride him, for he was spirited and wild, and when he ran it was like all the rushing of the wind in Rethe. Esme would bring him treats of carrots and apples, but again and again she was told he was not for her, until she thought her heart would break with longing for what she was denied. 

And one day, with her father out in the orchards and her mother occupied with washing-day, she crept into the stables to stroke beautiful Star's nose, and rub her own small nose against his glossy neck as she whispered to him of her great love. 

Where the idea had come to her from, she'd never known, but before she knew what she was about, Esme found herself standing in the loosebox with Star's bridle in her hands, then climbing up onto the box's rail to slip the bridle onto Star's perfect head, working the bit in between his teeth and the back of the check-piece over his ears. She'd been too small to lift the saddle, much less place it on Star's back, but she had ridden bareback before, and wasn't afraid. 

Oh, but she loved the feel of those smoothly-rippling muscles beneath her legs, the strength barely contained by her hands. She'd walked Star out of the stables, trotted him beyond the Smials and then, with all the brilliant green emptiness of the open fields around them, brought him to a canter and then a gallop, a wonderful, flying, full-tilt gallop with her hair streaming back and her eyes and mouth full of the wind. 

It was glorious, the most glorious motion she'd ever felt, or ever expected to feel. It was everything she'd hoped and wished for--and by the time she'd realized she'd lost control, that she could not hold Star back or, at this terrible speed, hope to keep her seat if the pony took it into his head to jump, Star was gathering himself to fly over a low wall--and Esme was flying too, up into the open air and down, down, striking the wall itself so hard that her arm shattered and the breath was knocked from her body and all the world went dark. 

Esme stood against the wall of the Great Smials infirmary and watched the healers work over her son, her only, precious, longed-for, worshiped son, and waited for all the world to go dark again. 

The old gammers' saying about putting all one's eggs into one basket popped into her mind. Well, she'd done that, hadn't she? Put in not only all her present eggs, but her past and future ones as well. When Merry had been small, her life had been easy enough: the little lad was so very healthy, so sturdy, so aware of the world, so quick to laugh and smile. How could she not have loved him, even were he not the answer to all her prayers and dreams? So 

much love she carried inside her that it spilled into everything she said and did, until her name became a watchword for generosity and kindness, and everyone blessed the wife of the Master's heir. 

But Merry was *her* son, after all, and his innate Tookishness was only masked beneath his blue Brandybuck eyes and his honey-coloured Brandybuck hair. Indeed, the combination of Took and Brandybuck, common as it was, made her own nature within her son all the more dangerous, the Brandybucks' fearless and stubborn spirit married with Tookish audacity. Merry was like her, too, in that where he loved, he loved deeply and loyally, with that same painful intensity Esme herself knew only too well. 

There was, too, in both of them, that curious instinctual *knowing* of the Tooks, that which they called "the kenning" back home. She saw it often in Merry's eyes, the way he could ask a seemingly innocent question and suddenly understand matters that ought to have been far beyond his tender years, the way he seemed to know when someone was sad or ill or uneasy in the mind. She'd felt it herself the night of Merry's departure, when she'd suddenly sat bolt-upright in bed, then rushed to his room knowing full well that she would not find Merry in his bed, because she understood quite clearly, somewhere in her mind, where he had gone, and why. She'd run out into the dark in only her night-dress, racing along her son's path as if his small feet had left a trail of light upon the ground for her to follow, over to the millpond, where a clear ring on the damp grass showed where the smallest of the children's coracles had lain, then faster, running full out, down to the near bank of the Brandywine, where she'd screamed into the night sky, "Merry! Merry! Merry!" 

As if that would somehow bring him back to her against the current. As if he could hear her. 

She sank down to her knees upon the muddy bank, knowing the autumn swiftness of the water, knowing that her little one had been alone there, in his fragile craft, in his small, fragile body. 

*Is this where my life ends?* she wondered, *For surely there's no traveling back from here.* 

Saradoc had come to her, breeches pulled on hurriedly beneath his night-shirt, and lifted her up, saying words she knew were meant as comfort, though she'd lost all ability to make sense of their shape. 

She thought, *I love you, Sari, I truly do, in my heart and my mind, but this love for my child has no part of logic or consideration. It is wind and fire and the beat of blood in my veins.* 

Still, Esme let him lead her inside, watching whilst he marshaled the family and sent out messengers to Hobbiton and the Tookland. 

"We'll surely find him," everyone told her, with kind looks and pats to her hand. "Why, he'll be back with you in no time, dear Esme." 

She had nodded and given the slightest of smiles, but she had known, really, how things would be: either her Merry was dead, and she would grow suddenly old and grey and withered as Winter, or her Merry would find his own way to Bag End. 

Saradoc and the family did not understand this. Much as they loved little Merry, they'd no comprehension of the melding of Took and Brandybuck in his heart. Only Frodo, she thought, might understand a little, and so it was to Frodo that both Merry and she were bound. 

On the morning of the fourth day with no news, Esme put on her riding habit and her traveling cloak, saddled her pony with her own hands and, leaving behind a note for her husband, took road to Hobbiton. 

She changed ponies at Whitfurrows, at a farm she knew, and again at Frogmorton, but she did not stop and she did not sleep. To say Bilbo found himself surprised to see her, muddied and unsavory with travel and the dirt of the road, would have been an understatement. Indeed, when he opened to her sharp, impatient rap, on the afternoon of the sixth day, her elder cousin gaped at her a full minute before he remembered his manners and asked her inside. 

"Esmeralda!" he cried. "My dear, how did... I... Great stars above, it *is* still better than eighty miles to Buckland, is it not? Frodo only wrote to you yestermorn." 

"Is he here?" she asked softly. "Is my Merry here, cousin?" 

"Why...er...yes." Bilbo blinked at her rapidly, still obviously taken aback. "Yes, my dear, he is. Young Merry's made it here all on his own." 

Esme unclasped her cloak and let it fall. Her pony she left down by the gate, reins dangling. 

"Bring me to him?" she asked, trying to keep the command from her voice, to make it pleasant, a communication between a Gentlehobbit and her elder relative. 

"Yes, yes, of course my dear. Just this way. I've put him in beside Frodo. Thought it best, you understand." 

Esme nodded, following, though so close to her child she hardly needed a guide anymore. That sensation of trailing Merry's footprints returned, as if she felt and tasted him in the air. 

Behind the door of the room Bilbo indicated had been a stocky young Hobbit with fairish hair, like Merry's and, beside him, her precious lost one himself. 

And Esme's heart had torn, because in Merry's eyes she saw that, while his small, battered body had been found, the person behind those silvery-blue eyes was still terribly lost in a wilderness she had no power to track, struggling to find his way home again, and contrary to all she felt and believed, she was not the one to be his guide. 

And now Esme cursed herself, for what had she done? Pulled away from him, just when Merry was running back to her? What had she been so terribly busy with, what had been so necessary that she'd scarcely seen her greatest treasure for the past two weeks? How was it tiny Estella Bolger, and not she, knew something was amiss with her Merry? 

Worst of all, she couldn't help but wonder, if she'd intended to punish him for leaving, by pulling away from him in return? He was only a child, only a little, little child, and his actions, however misguided, could certainly be understood. 

"Esme," said Miravella Took, Ferdinand's wife, second amongst the Smials healers. "It's not so desperate as all that. Don't weep, my dear." 

Esmeralda brushed her eyes. She hadn't realized she'd been weeping. 

"Those wretched children--and I do include my son in that--can't resist the snow and ice, and if one amongst them has the sense that's given a goose it would be strange as news from Bree." She grasped Esme's arm firmly, propelling her toward the door. "Go away now, for a little, while we make your Merry warm as toast again, and I'll have you sent for presently." 

"Presently?" Esme murmured, but by then she found herself in the corridor, with the door shut quite firmly behind, and when she took a step to turn herself back inside, she nearly tripped over little Estella, huddled just beside the door. 

Estella had sat herself down upon the floor, sobbing bitterly, with the skirts of her green linsey-woolsey frock pulled up, the better to wipe her eyes and nose on the ruffle of her petticoat. 

Esme lowered herself beside the small lass, watching the sad and scrunched-up little face, the small nose and the tips of the ears very red indeed with weeping. 

"Estella," Esme said, and stroked her fingers down the fur of one small foot. "Estella, dearest, why are you crying so?" 

"You are too," said Estella in a choked voice. 

"I suppose I was," Esme answered, "But I shan't anymore. I've decided to let their healers do their good work for Merry, and help him be strong with all my best hopes. Can you do that too, Estella dear?" 

"But bad Pearl and Pimmie killded him." 

"But he isn't killded--ah, killed--dear. Just very cold, and the healers will make him nice and warm again, and then we shall go visit, to give him our love." 

Estella gazed up at her, consideration in her dark eyes. "After tea?" she asked. 

"Perhaps. If he's ready for visitors then." Esme glanced through the corridor window to the sky outside, which had grown dark, except for the moonlight reflected from the white crust of the snow. "It's rather late, Estella. Have you not been given your tea yet?" 

"The others went. I stayed with my Merry." 

*My Merry?* Esme thought, smiling. She wondered if her son knew he'd such an ardent admirer. "You were very clever to come fetch me when you saw Merry was ill. It can be a dangerous thing for a little Hobbit to grow so cold." She rose, extending a hand down to the small. "Such a brave girl deserves something extra special for her tea. Will you come with me to the kitchens, love?" 

Estella brightened considerably at the mention of a special tea, and she came along happily hand-in-hand with Esme to the kitchens, where Cook sat them down at a little table off to one side, and prepared a special pot of bubbling cheese-mixed-with-broth, with bits of toasted bread and plump poached mushrooms to dip in it. Estella plied her little fork quite skillfully and Esme joined in, partly for company, and partly because there is nothing so comforting to even a grown Hobbit as simple but well-prepared food, particularly if mushrooms are involved. 

Around the time the first batch of mushrooms had disappeared, and Cook had brought another, Esme's brother Paladin came to join them at the table, his face like thunder. 

"What's this I hear about my naughty lasses?" he asked. 

Estella, now fairly glowing with mushrooms and cheese, set down her fork and wiped her mouth nicely. "Cousin Esme callded us, but Pimmie said have a 'venture instead, so we went to the pond and cracked the whip, only Pimmie let go and Merry fallded through the ice. So we all came home and everyone wanted tea." 

"Hmn." Paladin borrowed Esme's fork to stormily eat a mushroom, before one of Cook's helpers passed him a new one of his own. 

"Estella was very brave," Esme said. "She came to fetch me, and didn't give up until I was found." 

Paladin smiled at the little lass, who smiled back, shyly. "What a clever girl you are indeed, Estella! I'm sure the Grandfather will have something extra special to put in your hood. As for Misses Pearl and Pimpernel Took, however..." He dipped another mushroom and ate it thoughtfully. 

"I'm sure they meant no actual harm, Dinny," Esme said. She'd been terribly frightened when she found her son so cold in his bed, but she felt better now, stronger, a combination, she supposed, of mushrooms, playing the part of the wise grown-up for little Estella, and Cousin Miravella's calming words. 

"They may have meant no actual harm, Esme," her brother responded, "But neither did they mean actual good. Childish pranks are one thing--stars above know *we* played enough in our time--but Pearl will go along with whatever her sister says, and if she's any the older and wiser, then I've yet to see the proof." He frowned again, but only for a moment. "Come, dear Esme, let's see to your little madcap lad, and then I must devise a suitable punishment for those two naughty Hobbits. What do you say, Estella?" he asked, lifting the little lass down from her chair, but Estella's face became so very stricken at the thought of anyone being punished that it made Paladin laugh. 

"Well, perhaps, then a visit to the Thain will convince them of the seriousness of their acts." He laughed harder, and Esme laughed with him, brother and sister together, with Estella looking from one to another in perplexity, because while "Thain" was a large and important word to the little lass, Esme and Paladin knew there was no kinder or more mild-mannered Hobbit in all the Shire than their Cousin Ferumbras. 

VI. 

"And then they *boiled* me, mummy," Merry said indignantly, "Like a mushroom in broth." He cast a resentful look upon Cousin Miravella, who sat in a comfortable chair in the corner, with her inventory book open the desk. She glanced up briefly, smiled and returned to the rapid notations she was making upon its pages. 

"Did they now, dearest?" Esme responded. "I must say, then, that you're a very pink and cosy little mushroom, which is far nicer for me to see than you lying still and cold and blue in your bed." 

"Did you think I was killed, mum?" he asked, her curiously. "You must have been very frightened then." 

Merry shifted uncomfortably against his pillows, for though the healers had given him quite a large spoonful of the too-ripe grape syrup, his back and chest and shoulder all ached horribly. He was glad his mum had stayed when Estella and Uncle Dinny went away, because talking to her could take his mind off some of the pain, and make him less angry with himself for ruining his holiday besides. 

"I was very frightened," Esme replied. "Especially since I haven't quite shaken off my earlier fright." 

"From me being lost?" Merry asked. 

"From you being lost," his mother replied. "Merry, dear, why didn't you just say to me that you needed to see Frodo right away? I'd have wrapped you up snug and driven you to Hobbiton, despite what the healers said." 

"I b'lieve I was very mixed-up in my thinking, mum, " Merry told her thoughtfully. "And Grandfather Rory frightened me. What if he didn't let me go? Everyone has to do as he says, and he's a bully, like Berilac. That's what I thought." 

"I don't have to do what Rory says," Esme told him. 

"Don't you?" Merry stopped to ponder that. He'd always thought of his grandfather as all-powerful, even when wrong, and that someone would go against his will seemed nearly incomprehensible. "Why not, mum? Is it because you're a Took?" 

"Partly," she answered. "Mostly, I suppose. Because a Took bows to no one, until the king returns to Norbury." 

Merry tried to wriggle down a bit in his mounded pillows. "I'm so very uncomfortable, mum," he told her mournfully. 

"I know, my love. Try to think of something else. Try to think of something lovely." 

"Will the king ever come back. do you think? What would that be like, I wonder?" 

"Oh, very grand, I suppose, though that sort of thing's best left to the Big People, and isn't likely to be something we'll see--not in our lives, at any rate." 

Merry's eyes had gone far-away, with that especially silver-blueness that meant he was thinking hard. "I keep trying to imagine, but I can't. It's like trying to imagine the world outside the Shire. I can see the pictures in books, and the ones Cousin Bilbo's drawn of things from his adventures, but I can't imagine a whole village of Big People, or a huge dragon lying on his gold, or a war--or even a battle." 

"That's because, my love, we are Hobbits, and Hobbits are not meant to imagine such things. We are meant to imagine orchards filled with apples and great patches of mushrooms growing and ponies trotting and neighing in the sun. We are meant to imagine the sun on the river and dancing someday with a lass you fancy, or picnics with lovely things to eat. We're meant to imagine what our children will look like, and how our gardens will grow next year. Simple things, my Merry, and true things, and things the Big People don't think of as often as they should." 

"Lovely things," Merry murmured, feeling heavy with sleep. "Strawberries in Forelithe. And what to give my new little cousin for his Naming-day." 

"That's it, my Merry," Esme said, and one of her hands held his good hand, whilst the other stroked his curls. 

The world was full of sleep, and silence, and all around him was peaceful and good. 

VII. 

The good thing about Pearl, Merry thought, was that when she'd been caught being naughty and was punished, she took the punishment and didn't hold grudges, even when the punishment was something so harsh as no sweets for a week--an especially severe restriction so close to Yule, with the kitchens fairly bursting with biscuits and boiled sweets and lovely little cakes. 

The bad thing about Pimmie was that when she was punished, she resented it and held grudges, even when one tried to make amends by offering her one's own puddings and treats when the grown-ups weren't looking. What was worse was that she took the sweets Merry gave her, but didn't make up and be friends again, but scowled and acted cross instead. 

The very amusing thing about Pervinca was her habit (which everyone said she'd soon grow out of, though she showed no signs of ever doing so) of eating anything, at anytime, small enough to fit into her mouth, whether it was food or no. On this visit alone, Merry had watched her swallow a thimble, a marble, a piece of chalk, poor Rag's other eye (Rags had come along to the Tookland not because *Merry* needed him, but because he thought it time for Rags to come live with the new little cousin, if he was a lad--Rags was very particular about only belonging to a lad). Pervinca, in fact, seemed to favor buttons, because she'd also eaten quite a small, pearly one from Uncle Dinny's best shirt and also the bottom button from Frodo's third-best waistcoat, which had made Merry rather peevish with her, as he knew Frodo liked to keep his things nice. She'd also eaten a white pebble from the drive and a red bead like a ripe berry, from Pimmie's necklace that broke and scattered all over the nursery floor. 

"Why does Pervinca eat things?" he asked Auntie Egg, the day before First Yule, as they both lay in the parlor--Merry on the sofa and Auntie Egg in the big chair with her feet up on the hassock. They were both of them extremely uncomfortable, Merry because his shoulder had been hurt worse, falling on the ice, than it had been before, and also because he was ill again, in a heavy, feverish, vague sort of way, that mostly meant he was very tired and not very interested in games or meals or moving about. Auntie Egg was uncomfortable because the kicking baby had grown very big inside her, and while the day before he'd seemed intent on turning somersaults, this day he'd dropped down very low inside her, so that Auntie Egg said she felt he was pressing on her bones, trying to push them apart where they weren't meant to go. 

Merry had great hopes for his new cousin as a future companion, should he continue to carry on in this way. 

"Why does Pervinca eat things, Merry?" Auntie Egg gazed at him with her eyebrows lifted, in the way Merry knew meant she was perplexed. "Why, because she's hungry, I suppose." 

"No, auntie," Merry said patiently and gave her a list of the things he'd seen disappear into his young cousin's mouth. 

"Good gracious!" Auntie Egg cried. "She'll choke herself!" 

"I shouldn't think so," Merry told her. "It's quite interesting to watch. I think she has a way of opening her throat specially, like a snake." 

"That's hardly the sort of news a mum likes to hear, Merry dear," his auntie said, and lurched to her feet, calling out, "Paladin! Dinny!" as she went, and leaving Merry alone. 

He wriggled on the sofa, attempted to sit up, then lay down against his pillows. He tried not to complain, because he knew it worried his mum, but there was simply no way for him to get comfortable. Merry wished Frodo would come along, because Frodo had a special way of holding him just so in his lap, supporting Merry with his arms and rubbing his sore back tenderly until he wanted to purr like a kitten. He began to resent Reginard Took, and then felt sorry, for it wasn't like a true friend to be jealous of another friend, and he had all his cousins to play with--when he was well, at least--and who did Frodo have but him? Only the grown-ups. 

Still, he wished Frodo would come. The view though the parlor window was nothing but dull, and even the snow, so lovely when first it fell, looked tired and pale. 

Merry squirmed again. Maybe the best thing would be just to climb into his bed and pull the covers over his head. He felt as if he'd nothing to look forward to, not a birthday party (for his dad said he was too ill to have one now, though perhaps they'd do something special when he felt well again) no dancing or wild games at Yule, for the same reason, no presents, most likely, from the Grandfather because he'd been so naughty, and nothing but Winter for the longest time. 

Merry rubbed his nose against the back of the sofa, but it wasn't soft and warm like Frodo's waistcoat. 

After a time, Saradoc came to find him, giving Merry a large spoonful of the nasty grape medicine, then carrying him off to bed. 

Merry wished his dad would talk to him again, as he once had--though Saradoc had always been quiet, as Hobbits went. His father was good at explaining things: how to find your way upward if you were ever buried under the snow (Merry liked that one, because it involved spitting); how to tell the hoots of one owl from another; how to tell the time by the movements of the sun; when to plant which kind of seed; how the family had come to live in Buckland; how to excavate new smials so that the tunnels didn't cave in. He liked the feel of his fathers hands, which were strong and a bit-rough-skinned, but always very gentle when they touched him, and he liked his father's eyes, which were his eyes, too, that same changeable grey-blue. 

Saradoc tucked him into bed with that gentle touch, arranging the pillows just so, until Merry felt more comfortable than he had all day. He stroked Merry's hair back from his warm brow, and bent down to kiss him, something his father didn't often do. Merry caught hold of Saradoc's hand and kissed the palm, clinging to his fingers as if he'd never let go. 

"Meriadoc," his father said, in his deep rumble of a voice. "Will you promise me that you will never run away again? If there's somewhere you feel you must go, come to me and tell me. I will not be the one to stop you, and I will help you as best I can." 

"Yes, dad," Merry answered, and not just dutifully. He knew he would do just that, for as long as they both lived. 

"Good," his father said, "For I love you, my Merry-lad." 

"And I love you," Merry murmured, already getting sleepy--the purple grape-stuff seemed to have that effect on him. "For ever 'n' ever." 

His mum came in then, to make Merry eat a little soup before he dropped off, then Frodo to kiss him goodnight, and the three of them sat with him as he drifted, making Merry feel, for the first time since Frodo went away, that he was safe, and loved, and all was right with the world, so that now he could begin to heal again. 

VIII. Great Smials - 1 Yule, 1389 SR 

Merry woke with a wonderful sense of anticipation and for a moment couldn't remember why. He sat up slowly, feeling that peculiar throb from his shoulder that came whenever he moved--but it was less this morning, nearly bearable. 

He knew he hadn't hung his hood the night before, and didn't actually believe he deserved to receive anything from the Grandfather, but when he peeped down at the end of his bed, there it was, the familiar green velvet with the gold border that had been his dad's Yule hood when he was a lad. 

Merry wriggled to the footboard, daring to sneak another look over the rail, his mouth going round with surprise and delight. The Grandfather had been! He *had*!" 

Eagerly, Merry hauled his prize up onto the bed, caressing the soft, if slightly worn velvet, his fingers exploring the shapes of the lumps inside. He liked to draw this part out, always denying himself as long as he could before burrowing like a small badger for the wonders inside. 

At last he could wait no longer. His fingers eeled into the folds of the hood, bringing out first a small paper sack full of sweets. He popped one into his mouth at once, a peppermint, pushing the candy round his teeth with his tongue until his entire mouth tasted of Winter. Next was a waxed-paper parcel of biscuits, just the right size for gobbling up in two bites, shaped like stars, crescent moons, hearts and ivy leaves. Next was a packet of those cakes he particularly liked, rich with nuts and butter, the kind that melted at once to sweetness on one's tongue. After that, he found a cloth bag of especially beautiful marbles, which he spilled out onto the bedclothes and rolled around with his fingertips, admiring their smooth cool perfection, and their colors which were just like jewels. 

Merry found a small paintbox with its own little brush inside, and a tin whistle with a slide at the bottom, which, when pulled, gave the notes a lovely swooping sound (Merry played with this only a little, as he didn't want it taken and put up high, with an adult saying to him in a trying-to-be-patient voice, "Perhaps later, Merry dear"). 

There were various other small but delightful things, and last of all, at the very bottom of the hood, he discovered the most miraculous toy he'd ever seen. 

It was a little owl, scarcely larger than his fist, and round its neck on a ribbon hung a small key. The owl was of metal and marvelously painted, every feather in minute detail. In its back was a small slot that perfectly fit the key. 

Merry gaped at this toy in wonder, trying to work out how to hold the owl and turn the key with only one hand--then he discovered that he could hold the toy quite nicely between his toes, and that the key turned easily (just the size for his small fingers). He turned it several times, then, scarcely daring to breathe, set the owl on his night-table, where it cocked its head, shook its feathers, flapped its wings three times and came toward him in a waddling walk. 

Merry crowed with delight, utterly unable to imagine how such an amazing thing had come to be made. He set it going three more times, each time with as much wonder in the little owl's performance as the last, but then he was afraid he would tire it out, and flopped back into his pillows, the perfect toy cradled on his chest, replete with happiness. 

In a little, Frodo entered, already washed, brushed and fully dressed, and carrying a tray. "Good morning, sleepyhead!" he called. "There's a face I know and love to see. Was the Grandfather good to you, my Merry?" 

Wordlessly, Merry handed his cousin the owl. Smiling, Frodo turned the key, sending the toy into its marvelous small dance. Frodo crouched down to watch, with his face so close to Merry's that Merry could not resist turning to kiss his cousin's cheek, whispering in his ear, "Happy Yule, my Frodo." 

Frodo rose, sat on the edge of the bed, and embraced Merry tenderly. "It's a lovely toy, Merry, and I believe the Grandfather must have been through Dale to fetch it for you. Happy Yule to you as well! And Happy Birthday too! Seven years old now! Nearly grown!" 

Merry giggled, because that was just silly, and moved to investigate the contents of the tray Frodo had brought, and which smelled quite appealing. There was oat porridge, his favorite, with brown sugar, currents and cream, and stewed apples, fresh milk and a small pumpkin muffin loaded with walnuts. Merry dealt with all of this quickly and happily, leaning against Frodo's side with his cousin's arm gently round his back. "You've eaten, Frodo?" he asked, belatedly, when the tray was beginning to look a little empty. 

"Yes, I've eaten," Frodo laughed. "And you finish every crumb. There's a sight I like to see--my merry Merry." 

"I'm back, aren't I?" Merry asked. "I was lost a long time, but I think I've found my way here to stay." He chewed the last bite of muffin slowly. "So, when you need to go...when you're back with Cousin Bilbo...I'll miss you, Frodo, but I won't get *so* unhappy. Not like this time. As long as there are lots of visits." 

"Yes, my dearest," Frodo told him seriously, "I am glad that you are back, and that you will be able to get along without me, sometimes, without making yourself so very sad--for my Merry is a special little Hobbit, and everyone who loves him missed him very much whilst he was gone. And I promise you, too, that there will be many, many visits." 

Merry gave a little sigh, and rubbed his cheek against Frodo's waistcoat, knowing that wherever Frodo was, he would always, always be loved. Content as he was, it occurred to Merry that he still felt rather hungry--which may have been because the air of the Smials was fairly perfumed with the odors of good things to eat. 

"Will I be allowed to come to Yule Dinner, do you think, Frodo?" Merry couldn't help but ask. 

Frodo felt his forehead and looked into Merry's eyes. "Hmn, quite cool and quite clear. I think you're doing better, my Mer." 

"I am!" Merry exclaimed. "I'm ever so well, and I'm sure a good Yule Dinner would make me *perfect* again." 

Frodo laughed. "Well, you know it's up to your mum and dad, isn't it? But I imagine you'll be allowed. You understand, though, that there won't be any running or dancing or games." 

Merry pouted a bit at that, but soon brightened. "Yes, Frodo, I understand, and will be very good. Only I shall have to get nicely dressed, for I'm not going to Yule Dinner in my night-shirt. And I'll still be allowed my Yule cracker, won't I? You'll help me pull it?" Merry loved Yule crackers with their loud noises and the foil crowns of silver and gold inside and the silly riddles and the toys. Last year, in his cracker, he'd received the tiny pottery pony that still stood in a place of honor upon his night-table back home. 

Frodo laughed again. "Yes, I am sure whatever happens, you will be allowed your cracker, and yes, of course, I will help you pull it, as I do every year. 

Merry lay back, sighing happily. Had it been only yesterday he'd thought he had nothing to look forward to? "You will ask mum for me, won't you, Frodo?" 

"I will," Frodo answered, "That is, if you'll be a good boy and rest now." 

Merry looked up at him with his smile of best cooperation. "Be sure to say how good I'm being, and how well I am, won't you?" 

Taking up the tray with one hand, Frodo ruffled Merry's curls with the other. "Indeed I will, dearest. Indeed I will." 

When Frodo had gone, Merry lay quietly, stroking his owl's smooth surface with his thumb, and dreaming without closing his eyes. 

IX. 

Merry had indeed been allowed up for Yule Dinner, which was held in the Great Hall of the Tooks. Ivy and evergreen boughs were draped everywhere, bright with heavy-berried sprigs of holly. The vast Yule Log, as big as Merry himself, burned aromatically in the fireplace, and the hall itself glittered with hundreds of candles, their light sparkling off the best silver and best dishes, and the bright jewels round the lasses' throats, or in their hair. 

The Thain gave his Yule speech, which everyone agreed was a particularly good one, as it was much, much shorter than the previous year's. 

The long table fairly groaned with roast pig stuffed with apples, mushrooms and chestnuts, sweet potatoes with brown sugar and butter, regular potatoes whipped up with butter and cream, soft white rolls, sprouts (which, as it was Yule, Merry wasn't required to eat), vast dishes of mushrooms, jellies and grapes and more tarts--apple, pumpkin and mince--than Merry had ever laid eyes upon in his life. 

After the food came the songs and stories, all of them quite good, and Bilbo's very exciting, all about the dragon Smaug. Dancing followed, during which Merry sat happily on his mum's lap, content, for once, to listen to the lively music, then Charades, during which Uncle Dinny amused him very much by dressing up as Auntie Egg, then a bit more food to fill up the corners, and it was nearly time for bed. 

The children all gathered round the nursery fire, for Merry to give them his birthday gifts: a pretty necklace for Pearl, a new spinning-top, complete with whip, for Pimmie, a lovely, shiny yellow-painted duckling carved of wood for Pervinca (luckily, much too large to fit inside even her mouth), a throwing-ball for Ferdy, a tin of sweets for Freddy and a soft toy kitten for Estella, who hugged it closely, gazing up at him with what Merry knew was love in her great, brown eyes. Merry wished he'd something more to give her--after all, Estella had saved his life, and he felt the debt keenly. 

To Reginard, who loved to draw and paint, he gave a set of new brushes, and to Frodo two beautiful bottles of ink, one in silver and one in gold. 

"I shall have to write something very special with these, Merry," Frodo said, smiling his thanks. "Which leads me to the present Regi and I have prepared for you." 

Merry laughed. "You don't give Hobbits presents on their *own* birthdays, silly Frodo!" 

"Nonetheless," said Frodo, laughing in return. "I have one for you." And he passed Merry a very heavy something, rectangular, like a book. 

Carefully, Merry pulled off the spangled paper in which the present was wrapped. The cover was a glossy brown, the edges of the pages gilt, and it had the wonderful, bookish smell Merry loved, of good leather and ink. With a trembling hand, he slowly turned the pages, until he knew exactly what this book was: Frodo's stories, all written down for him, with the most wonderful pictures, just the ones he'd been looking for when he'd searched Frodo's room not so very long before. He looked up, speechless with awe, seeking his cousin's eyes. 

"I wrote the words and Regi did the pictures," Frodo told him. "And Bilbo helped us both. So now you know what's kept us so busy in the library--and we've only just finished this morning, so it's a good thing you were a slugabed, my Merry." 

Merry didn't know what to say. A lump formed in his throat, but he knew he must tell Frodo something. "Thank you," he said at last, knowing that wasn't enough, but hoping Frodo would read the rest shining in his eyes. "It's the best present ever, better than my owl from the Grandfather, even." 

"You're very welcome, Mer," Frodo answered, his own eyes bright. 

Merry turned a few more pages, running his fingertips over the many small details of an illustration, unable to believe such a wonderful thing had been given to him for his very own. He felt extremely sorry, too, for having felt jealous of Reginard, who, though Merry didn't know him so well as Frodo, had always been kind to him. "Thank you ever so much, Regi!" he said, with his best smile. "This is the best book, and these are the very best pictures I've ever seen." 

In answer, Reginard gave a shy smile and put out his hand. Merry clasped it, wondering why he and Reginard hadn't been better friends before. 

His happiness was complete, sitting there in the cosy nursery with nearly everyone he loved--though he wondered where Uncle Dinny and Auntie Egg had gone to. 

When he had a chance, he asked his mum about it, and she smiled, saying, "It looks as if, Merry, you were right about your new cousin's birthday after all." 

X. Great Smials - 2 Yule 1390 SR 

In the night Merry awakened, thinking he'd heard something dreadful. He sat upright in bed, trembling, his heart beating fast, listening with every bit of attention he possessed until the cry came again. 

There it was! Merry shuddered. His Auntie Egg. His beloved Auntie Egg was crying out in agony! Something was hurting her, and he couldn't bear it, he couldn't. He must protect her and make whatever it was go away! 

Merry slid out of bed so suddenly he tangled in the bedclothes and hit the floor with a thump, landing, fortunately on his backside instead of his shoulder or head. 

*Stop!* he wanted to yell, *Stop hurting her!* But he didn't. He held perfectly still instead, hoping against hope that maybe he'd imagined the noise, that it had been a bad dream. 

Frodo, looking half awake, hurried into Merry's room in his night-shirt. "Merry!" he called, "Did you fall?" 

"Only a little," Merry answered absently. "I'm not hurt at all." Still, he allowed Frodo to pick him up because, in his confusion and distress, it was good to feel the comfort of a loving touch. 

"I'm glad you're not hurt," Frodo said, tucking Merry back into bed. "Did the cries frighten you?" 

Merry nodded. "Can you make it stop, Frodo?" 

"No, my love," his cousin answered, shaking his head, "Nor should we want to, Merry. It's time now for our new cousin to come into the world, just as your mum told you. He'll soon be born now." 

Merry listened again. "Is that why Auntie Egg is crying?" 

"Yes, Merry." 

"But why would my little cousin hurt his mummy so?" 

"All babies hurt their mums, Merry," Frodo answered quietly. 

"I never!" Merry was outraged. "I *never* hurt my mum that way." 

"But you did, Mer. It's the way things are. You didn't mean to hurt your mummy, it just couldn't be helped. Hobbit babies have large heads, and there isn't so very much room for them to come through. That's what hurts. And the mummies have to push very hard to help their babies out, so that hurts too." 

Merry had grown up around animals, and wasn't completely ignorant of how babies came to be, but the concept of such terrible pain was new and frightening to him. "Why do they keep having babies, then, if it hurts so badly?" 

"Because when they look down on their little ones, the pain seems to go far away, and so much love takes its place." 

"Then Auntie Egg will love the new baby, even though he hurt her?" 

"She will, Mer. Just like your mummy loves you." 

Merry pondered this, sure Frodo was right, but not quite ready to wrap his mind round the things he'd said. He couldn't stop listening until, finally, he heard another cry, not his auntie this time, but a voice he'd never heard before, a high, shrill squall like the cry of a hawk, that went on and on and on. 

"He's very loud," Merry said, after a time, when the cry did not stop. He fell asleep, finally, in Frodo's arms, with the noise still in his ears. 

When Merry woke again it was still dark, and the loud crying hadn't ended--if anything, it had grown louder. 

Enough was enough, Merry decided, and he carefully disentangled himself from his older cousin, slipped over the side of the bed and padded from his room. The squalling grew louder the closer he came to Uncle Dinny and Auntie Egg's room. 

Was his cousin *always* going to be so noisy? he wondered. That might be interesting. Though not at night when he was trying to sleep. 

He crept into the little room beside his aunt and uncle's big one, where Uncle Dinny was walking with the new cousin in his arms, patting the baby's back and trying to shush him with little nonsense words and songs. 

What Merry could see of the baby's face over Uncle Dinny's shoulder was round and red as a pippin apple, with a surprising amount of reddy-brown hair standing up on top. The new cousin's eyes were scrunched tight shut, but his mouth was open wider than seemed possible. 

"That's enough of that, my lad," Uncle Dinny said at last. "You're fed and you are clean, do you plan to keep the family awake all night? Tenderly, he laid the baby down on his back in the little cot prepared for him. "Let's let you lie there a little, and see if you won't cry yourself out whilst I see to your mummy." He covered the new cousin over with a soft, knitted blanket, kissed his small, red forehead and left the room, shutting the door behind him. 

The baby cried on, but something in its wails seemed different. Merry padded closer, trying to see over the edge of the cot. All he could make out were small furry feet flailing, and small fists beating angrily at the air. 

"You're a silly lad," Merry informed him. "What do you have to cry about?" 

He went for the straight-backed chair over by the door, pushing it until it stood just beside the cot, then climbed up, carefully as he could (which wasn't an easy task with only one arm) onto the seat, then over the side of the cot. 

The baby's hands and feet struck harder at the air, but it ceased its wailing all at once with a noise that sounded like, "Mmrlp?" 

"Yes," Merry told him. "It's me, Merry. We're first cousins, which is very important, only you have to promise me not to be like Berilac. And since neither of us have any brothers, we'll have to be like brothers to each other, won't we?" 

He drew back the baby's blanket, studying the new arrival. Yes, he was a lad, just as Merry had known he would be. He had a little sticking-out belly, and sturdy little arms and legs, and very fuzzy feet. Now that he'd stopped wailing, he wasn't as red as before, but he was still quite pink, shiny and new. Merry felt a complicated wave of something go through him, so strong it brought tears to his eyes, though he wasn't sad. 

"Were you calling me, little cousin?" he asked. "Is that why you were crying?" 

The baby's muddy-green Took's eyes turned toward him; his perfect small mouth opened. Merry touched a finger lightly to his lips, to the spot where his mum had told him the Valar touched each baby before it come into the world, telling it, "Hush, now. Don't give away the secrets." 

"Yes, I can see that you were," Merry told him. "But don't cry anymore. Your Merry's here now." He curled up carefully beside his new cousin, rubbing his nose into the plump crease between the baby's neck and shoulder, breathing in the clean, sweet, special baby-smell. Here he felt absolutely at peace, and so full of love he thought it must require more than just one body to contain such a feeling. 

"Pippin," he said, trying out the name. "Pippin. For when I saw you first you were so red you reminded me of a little apple. And, you know, it suits with your sisters names." 

The baby gurgled, fists flying. Merry caught one, holding it gently in his good hand. "Happy Yule, Pippin, my love," he whispered, "And Happy Birthday, too."   
  
  
  



	11. She Moves Through the Fair

ff.net hates me, I swear—I just discovered that it cut off the last page of this chapter. Why? Who knows. Let's try this again, shall we?  
  
Chapter 11: She Walks Through the Fair  
  
Buckland, 1484 SR

Ambling home from the hill with Pip by my side, I've been thinking of a Litheday, oh so very long ago now. The past is with me always, but the sadness that caught hold and shook me so roughly yestereve has quite dispersed, driven off by my cousin's cheerful company and the sweetness of memory (and, I suppose--though I would not say so much to Pippin--by the hope of what comes after all this, when the grey curtain over this world parts).  
  
I would not say it, for if anything saddens my dear Pip it would be such words, and today life has sweetness and savor, which makes me in no hurry to rush away.  
  
"Gather up all the moments of sweetness," my mum once said to me. "Gather them up like berries, Merry, and make something lovely of them."  
  
I smile, remembering that: a little basket half empty; my fingers and mouth stained purple with juice, so that I could not be made tidy again without a good, brisk wash and an entire change of clothes.  
  
Then I glance over at Pip and see he, too, is remembering, perhaps that same Litheday as well, but that his eyes are wet.  
  
"Pip?" I say.  
  
"Let's go at once," he blurts out suddenly, with a sharpness in his voice I'm not accustomed to hear, much as I know he's not being cross with me, but only his own apprehensions. "To Long Cleeve, I mean, Mer."  
  
"Get it over with, Pippin?" I respond, somehow not able to resist the urge to tease him, for Pip's expression is very much that of a young lad most reluctant to have an aching tooth pulled, no matter that it will ease the pain.  
  
"Merry!" Pippin says chidingly, "She is my wife."  
  
More's the pity, I think, but smile in a manner I hope Pip will recognize as placating.  
  
"That she is, Pip. Let's stop at the Hall, toss a few things into a bag and have a word with Sariadoc. We can stop at the Bridge Inn tonight."  
  
"That's my practical Merry," Pippin says, shifting the picnic basket from one hand to the other.  
  
"I can take that, Pip, if you'd like."  
  
My cousin waves me off. "No, no, Merry, that's quite all right."  
  
"I'm not so feeble I can't carry a basket."  
  
Grinning suddenly, Pippin passes it over to my hands, and the thing is cursedly heavy--all the empty bottles, plates and cutlery, I suppose. "What on earth did you put in here, Pip? Stones?"  
  
"Large, heavy ones. Did you want me to take it back, Mer?"  
  
"No. Thank you. Kindly." I'm trying very hard not to breathe heavily as, freed from his burden, Pippin increases his pace at least twofold--though fortunately, he takes pity on an old Hobbit soon enough, and slows again.  
  
"D'you think he understands?" Pip drops back to set his own hand to the basket-handle, just by mine, so that we both share the load.  
  
"Er...who understands what, Pip?" One must be patient, at times, to unravel my cousin's musings.  
  
"Why, Éomer King, Mer," Pippin answers. "Do you think he understands how old we are? Even if we had been the lads he thought us..."  
  
"Which you were," I put in.  
  
"Which I was," Pippin agrees, "And you not so very much older, my Merry. Still, it's been sixty-five years. We'd be quite aged enough in Man years. Has he any idea you're 102 now?"  
  
"He's my King, Pip," I answer, wondering why we're having this conversation. "And nearly as old as you. For a Big Person, that's positively ancient, you know."  
  
"I don't like to be old," Pippin says suddenly, in a voice I've never heard from him. "Inside I'm not. Inside I'm just Pippin, and I'm wondering if the apples aren't ripe, and if today wouldn't be a good day to go scrumping, or for a last plunge in the river before it's too cold. But then, Merry, I catch hold of this old Hobbit in the looking-glass and wonder how my dad got in there in my place, and how I could possibly have been fifty years the Thain, and how these adorable small Hobbits running round the Smials could possibly be my grandchildren. How could Pippin Took, that scalawag, that impetuous young fool, have this white hair and these aches in his joints? None of it seems real to me, Mer."  
  
Pippin's green eyes flash up at me, just as they ever were, even if the skin around them is more lined than it was of old, and I see exactly what it is he means.  
  
"Only you seem real to me, now," he says, "Because no matter how I change, your love is the thing that never will. Merry, do you understand what that means to me? I would follow you again into Moria, into Mordor if I had to, much less to Rohan and what comes after."  
  
I'm not prepared for Pippin to let loose of the basket, and the sudden, added weight causes it to crash from my hand.  
  
"So you must promise me, you must promise me, my dear," Pippin cries, nearly shouting, his fingers twisting now into the fabric of my jacket sleeves. "To hold on just as long as you possibly can. Don't go on ahead of me, whatever you do. Stop the journey if it gets too much, but don't rush on ahead of me."  
  
I'm not accustomed to this from my Pip, and his sorrow shocks the breath from me. He's read my thoughts, as always, and I'm sorry to have hurt him with his knowledge of me.  
  
"Pip," I say, wrapping him up in my arms. "Pippin, my love, even if a year is an instant, in the place beyond where the curtain parts, that instant's too long to be apart from you. I promised never again, didn't I? At Cormallen, I promised you. Did you think I've changed since then?" I pat his back and put him away a little, still holding tight to his arms. "So, tell me now, where does this come from? Have you been thinking too hard again?"  
  
Pippin laughs, bending down his face to wipe his eyes on my sleeve, as if he were a sad little Hobbit, no more than four years old, as I can still remember him. "Yes, I suppose I have. Always a mistake for us Tooks. Put it down to fear, Mer--I've faced Orcs and Trolls and Ruffians, but I'm terrified of my wife."  
  
I give him a small shake, not content to let his sudden grief by so easily, but Pippin only smiles to see the raising of my brows.  
  
"I was just afraid... thinking too much, as you said... of the years between us. What if you went seven years on ahead, and I...?" Pippin shakes his head, denying all such sorrow. "No, no, I won't think it, Mer."  
  
"That's good, my Pip," I say.  
  
"So, quickly now, let's get home, and pick up those bags. I declare you shall stand me a pint and a pipe tonight at the Bridge Inn, for making me think this way."  
  
"Gladly," I laugh, slinging an arm round his shoulders, and it isn't until we're on our ponies and ten miles down the Bridge Road that I realize we've left the picnic basket behind us, all alone on the side of the hill.

  
  
Michel Delving, Litheday, 1422 SR 

"Merry? Merry, did you see her just then?" Pippin tugged hard on his cousin's sleeve, hoping to attract Merry's wandering attention back to him.  
  
"What?" Merry's chin jerked up as he startled--obviously, wherever he'd been, it was nowhere near the ale pavilion, Michel Delving, or the glories of the now-once-more-annual fair on this bright, warm Midsummer's Day. "I'm sorry, Pip? Did you ask me a question just then?"  
  
Poor old Merry, Pippin thought, his face creasing momentarily with sympathy. He drew his fingertip gently over his cousin's palm, which lay open before him on the table. There, broken blisters lay over callus. Merry's fingers were torn as well, in a number of small ways, because Merry had been working (tirelessly, it might seem to others, though Pippin didn't have to look hard to discern the deep weariness that underlay his cousins every look and word) to knock down each last one of the ugly Man-houses and buildings that had sprung up during their year's absence, and see that proper Hobbit-homes went up in their stead.  
  
Noble work, Pippin thought, And good work. Work that needed to be done, he supposed. Only it was the way Merry went about it, with a sort of painful desperation, that hurt Pip's heart to see.  
  
"I asked if you'd seen her," Pippin repeated, patiently, though his heart was no longer in the question, really. Merry was missing Frodo, he knew, missing him dreadfully, in a way that went beyond anything any Hobbit in the Shire might have understood. Even Sam, Pippin suspected sometimes, might not have plumbed the depths of Merry's despair, for Sam, after all, had not deserted his master, his friend, but been there, every step of the way. Gone with him even to the Cracks of Doom, while Merry had not, and Pippin knew his cousin took that pain deep into his soul, and was filled nearly to overflowing with the sorrow and the shame.  
  
Pippin suspected Merry told himself any number of things in the quiet of his bed at night, and shed any number of tears he did not allow Pip to see, and thought, while it was true there also there might have been any number of things Pippin might have tried to say to ease Merry's torn heart, he did not say them, because he knew, just now, his cousin was not prepared to hear.  
  
He wrapped his fingers gently round Merry's chill right hand. "It's nothing, Mer. Just..."  
  
A spark of life leapt back into his cousin's eyes, and his cheeks rounded in a true Merry-smile. "No, Pip, you said her. So now you must tell--and truthfully, mind--what lass has caught my little Pip's eye?"  
  
Pippin growled at him, slapping Merry's arm--though he knew his growls were never precisely threatening, even amongst Hobbits. "Now you mean to tease me, and make me feel a right fool, and what would the king think if he heard you call a knight of Gondor 'little Pip?'"  
  
"Perhaps that we have remained as we were more than we've changed, and that young Hobbits who fly over the moon for pretty lasses are bound to receive at least a bit of teasing from their cousins." Merry continued to grin at him, eyes twinkling, and Pippin was so very grateful to see that familiar expression on his dear cousin's face that he would have borne any amount of jesting only to have that look remain.  
  
"Who is the lucky lass, anyway, that my Pippin fancies so?"  
  
Pippin opened his mouth to sing the girl's praises, but at that moment Berilac Brandybuck flung himself down on the bench by Merry's side, caught hold of his cousin's pint and helped himself to a generous drink.  
  
"Have you seen her?" he demanded.  
  
Merry flung up his hands in despair. "What I can clearly see is that both of you've taken leave of your wits."  
  
"Who's that, Berilac?" Pippin asked.  
  
"Diamond Took," Berilac replied, signaling the pot-girl for an ale of his own, and another for Pippin as well. "Cousin of yours, I suppose, Peregrin? You know, from up Long Cleeve way?"  
  
"Distant cousin," Pippin said, ready to fill Berilac in on the precise connection between his own branch of the family, in and about Tuckborough, and the North Tooks of Long Cleeve--but just then his ale arrived, and he spent a long moment slaking his thirst instead. "Ah, that's the stuff!"  
  
"Diamond Took," Merry repeated wonderingly. "Do I know her, Pip?"  
  
"You met her once, at Yule, I believe." Pippin replied thoughtfully. "Remember, when quite a lot of us went in to raid the pantry, and I climbed up the pantry shelves and you bumped me, and I spilled the big honey-pot just on top of her head."  
  
"Oh, yes." Merry laughed. "How she screamed at that! Even louder than you, I believe. But that would have been twenty years ago now, I'm sure."  
  
"And I'm very sure she won't remember, aren't you?" Pippin paused to gulp his ale, feeling suddenly far too nervous for a soldier of the king. "I mean to say, she's grown up quite a bit since then."  
  
Berilac laughed appreciatively. "That, I imagine, she has--though I certainly didn't know her then. At least she won't associate me with you two."  
  
"She's the one I was telling you about, Mer," Pippin cut in. "Prettiest lass at the fair--prettiest, anyway, that's not married to Sam Gamgee." Pippin could not contain the grin that threatened to split his face. "Hair like black silk."  
  
"Eyes like stars," Berilac chimed in.  
  
"Did you see her hands?" Pippin asked. "How can hands, of all things, be so very extremely lovely?"  
  
"Of course, she's surrounded by admirers," Berilac mused mournfully. "Wouldn't see much in the likes of me. You might stand a chance though, Pip--future Thain, hero of the Battle of Bywater, Liberator of the Shire..."  
  
Pippin felt himself blush scarlet. "You know I don't like to talk of those things, Berry." He glanced over at Merry's face, seeing that the old, easy grin had faded, replaced by that bleakness that too often took its place.  
  
"Pity you're not wearing your Gondor livery, Pippin," Berilac continued. "That can always be counted on to ensnare a lass."  
  
"Since when have I wished to ensnare anyone?" Pippin answered, trying to keep his voice light, in fitting with the older Hobbit's teasing. "And some things, I'd say, are best left behind us."  
  
The pavilion began to fill as a stream of brawny young Hobbits filed in from one of the athletic competitions—the hammer-toss, it appeared, from their gestures--laughing and talking, filling the confined space with their noise.  
  
"I think..." Merry rose abruptly. "I believe I'll..." He never finished the thought, only laid down a handful of coins for their ales and left the tent without another word.  
  
A cloud passed over Berilac's face as he watched his cousin depart. "He'll be all right, won't he, Pip? His mum and dad are worried, I know, but he won't talk to anyone at the Hall, just goes about breaking up those cursed Man-houses as if he meant to slay a dozen dragons."  
  
"I know," Pippin said quietly. "And I believe he is—trying to slay something, I mean to say. Or at least to somehow take back the harm that's been done to the Shire, as if he could somehow carry it all away in a load on his back."  
  
Berliac nodded, tasted his ale and pulled a face. "There's our Merry to a 't,' isn't it? Go after him, Pip. See if you can't bring him back and make him happy again. If anyone can do so, it's you."  
  
But what if I can't? Pippin asked himself, a thought that always disturbed him, for he'd once thought he'd be all his cousin would need, and now...  
  
Let it only be said that Frodo's departure had badly shaken his confidence, as well as Mer's.  
  
Still, he flashed at Berilac the best smile he could and left the pavilion, standing on his toes (though he hardly needed to, being the tallest Hobbit there) to see if he could spy where Merry might have taken himself to.  
  
Try as he might, though, Pippin cold not make out anywhere a flash of honey- ed curls rising above the Hobbit-heads all around. What he did catch sight of was a glister of long black satin, a dimpled cheek, a pair of eyes as rich and vivid a blue as Frodo's had ever been, just slipping past him—until, that was, Pippin stopped her with a word.  
  
"Ah... er... Diamond..." Knight of Gondor and hero of the Battle of Bywater he might be, but Pippin was still sometimes a bit shy when it came to speaking with girls.  
  
Diamond paused. Stopped. Turned. Her eyes flashed at him—stars above, but she was tall for a lass, and Berilac had been correct, absolutely, stars were, indeed, exactly what her eyes resembled, if stars were blue as a fair evening sky in summer. Her skin shone pale gold and her lips had that sweet Tookish curve, meant for smiling.  
  
She'd an older Hobbit with her—her mother, Pippin surmised, for she'd an aged and faded version of Diamond's lovely looks.  
  
"And who might you be, young sir?" this older Hobbit asked of him.  
  
"Ah... Pippin. That is, Peregrin Took, from Tuckborough." He straightened, attempting to look noble and imposing, and wondering how badly he failed.  
  
"The Thain's son," said the older Hobbit thoughtfully, and a glitter came into her eyes as of silver coins falling. "Diamond, darling, greet your cousin Peregrin."  
  
"Peregrin," Diamond repeated, in a tone that seemed to hold equal parts boredom and impatience. "My service to you and to your family, I'm very sure."  
  
Maybe she's only tired, Pippin thought. Maybe she's a bit shy with lads, as I am with lasses, certainly she can't know how she sounds.  
  
"And... and... er... mine to yours... and... uh... theirs..." Pippin was fully aware that he'd begun to make a fool of himself, and how was it that he could save Faramir, or slay a troll, lead a hundred Tooks in battle and still not manage to talk comfortably with a pretty lass? He was blushing furiously, on fire all the way up to the fuzzy tips of his ears. How Merry would laugh if he saw him now!  
  
"Dear Peregrin!" Mistress Took burbled. "We haven't seen you since you were a little lad! Do you recall, Diamond dearest, the little boy with the honey, from when you were small?"  
  
Why? Pippin thought. Why, why, why must you mention that now? Isn't twenty years enough to drive that incident out of memory?  
  
"Oh, yes," Diamond said, her star-like eyes narrowing. "Oh, yes, I remember you now."

  
  
Merry despised in himself the weakness that drove him away from the crowd, away from his Pip (who would surely be concerned for his well-being) even from Berilac, who was, after all, his cousin as well.  
  
He hated, too, that the fair, two days of innocent pleasures he'd enjoyed in varying ways since he was a lad, should fill him now with such panic, as if every congregation of people, Big or Little, was a return to the battlefield. The chilly sweat that truckled down his spine, the coldness of his right hand, the catching of his breath and rapid drumbeat of his heart against the walls of his chest all shamed him.  
  
He must master this. He must.  
  
Bad enough that he'd been sent away, in disgrace it seemed, from work that needed doing—indeed, the he couldn't bear to leave undone. Worse still to be sent all the way here to Michel Delving, with his cousins as his keepers, his mum and dad's words still burning in his ears.  
  
"Take him, Pip. Take him. It doesn't do for Buckland to see him like this."  
  
"Yes, Esme, my dear, that will be best, I think."  
  
And that was true, because far from being any sort of hero, he'd brought shame to himself and his family by his deeds, and soon enough he'd been known by names he'd rather not hear, that they would trouble him, as "Mad Baggins" had never troubled Bilbo, for Merry had always longed to be thought well of, as Bilbo had not.  
  
Because, after all, when he'd fallen to pieces he'd done so quite publicly, not kept quietly to his eccentric self, as Bilbo always had done.  
  
Walking briskly, he'd already crossed to the outskirts of Michel Delving, and now Merry began to run as if entire bands of Orcs raced behind him, at his heels.   
  
It had all begun as a simple enough task from his father: to oversee the destruction of the last of the huts and ugly two-storied Man-houses that still clustered round the Brandywine Bridge. Except that "oversee," to Merry, had never meant lording it over the other Hobbits under his command. It had meant going in, shirt off and sledgehammer in hands.  
  
So he had worked through a long hot Forelithe morning, and when the others had stopped for elevenses and luncheon, followed by an ale or so and a lie- down in the shade, he'd kept on, because none of it must remain. None of it, not a badly-formed brick or a mean, narrow casement or a poorly-painted sill, and though Merry's hands stung with sweat and the broken blisters even his tough oxhide gloves could not prevent, he was not able to stop himself.  
  
Was not able to. No matter what he might wish. Choice had no part of the matter.  
  
He swung the heavy hammer for what might have been the thousandth or the millionth time and a wall exploded into rubble, a shower of grit and gravel that rained down on his head, bruising his skin and sticking in his hair, whilst his eyes streamed tears that might even have come from the dust, though he told himself he would not cry, not ever again, for what was there left in all the world to weep over now?  
  
Again, Merry gathered himself and swung, nearly spinning himself round with the force of the hammer-blow, the impact reverberating through his aching shoulders, his mind teeming with swarms of thoughts he'd no power left in himself to resist.  
  
not for this, not for this, not to come home to all this ugliness and would he have stayed and been happy in time if it hadn't been for this? all the fighting and the killing, the pain and dirt and ruin if not for the smoke in our sweet air and the filth in our clear waters and the glory of trees cut down, terrible out in the wild world but all so much worse when it's home?  
  
would I have been able to make him love me, love Sam and Pip and Rose and little Elanor enough to not need the sea and the ship? wouldn't we, or circle of love, our round shining band have sufficed and not the hole left inside him in the size and shape of the ring, growing and growing until it was all he could see? that bloody ring and why hadn't I been the one, the one to carry it for him or go with him and help him, perhaps if I'd been there and Sam too we would have been enough, enough to combat Gollum's evil, enough to fight the monster, enough to keep him here, only I didn't, I didn't, I let him go on almost alone to that terrible place when I'd said I would follow him all the way to the ends of the earth, because this was all my fault, after all, a vow make for the sake of my miserable small life and I'd promised when just a small lad, but I didn't go, did I, after all? and even though we had to draw the Orcs away, we had to, Pip and I, there was no helping that, still we shouldn't have stayed in the forest, Pip yes, but what earthly good was I?  
  
should have run, should have run back to the boats and followed, always better with boats than Frodo, always better in the wild, better at finding my way than a pair of Townhobbits, should have caught him up... Sam and I together could have done it, and up at the Cracks of Doom, with the evil voice of the ring in his mind, he would have listened instead to my voice in his ears, would have listened to his own Merry, because we always do... listen... listen to one another, Frodo and Merry, as long as I can remember and probably even further back than that, and then he would have thrown it away willingly, bit of a struggle but willingly, no claiming or biting or terrible dance on the edge of death and then no boat away, don't care if it's to the best place that ever was or will be, can't bear to have my Frodo gone, not like that, not forever and ever, and...  
  
Bricks and stones rained on him, battering Merry to his knees as he choked on the clouds of dust rising around him, then covered his face with his hands and sobbed until his skin was thick with a mud of dust and tears and blood whilst he screamed aloud, "Can't bear it, Frodo! Can't bear for you to be gone!"  
  
There were kindly voices, then, Hobbit voices, strong hands taking his arms. His right hand flopped down so that the sun glared in his eyes, because he couldn't feel it anymore, except the pain and the cold, as the other hands led him out of the rubble and sat him down, on a green and grassy place beneath a tree that had been planted and old before his grandfather was born.  
  
Strong arms went round him and gentle hands stroked his hair, but Merry couldn't stop sobbing, not if it was to save his life.  
  
Except that, after a while, it did stop. Not because the grief left him, but only because he'd grown too tired to cry anymore.  
  
As Merry fought for the ability to breathe again, there was Pip gazing down at him, the corners of his mouth quirked up and kindness in his eyes. "Feel any better now, my Mer?"  
  
Merry shook his head, for he didn't feel better. He felt exhausted, ashamed and nearly hollow with grief.  
  
"Merry's not hurt, is he?" Was that Berilac's voice? Merry supposed it must be—no other voice he knew was so deep, almost comically deep, really, as if every word his Brandybuck cousin spoke came from down in the bottom of a well.  
  
"Hurting, but not hurt, I'd say," Pip answered lightly. "Help me get him to his feet, Berry, and walk him across the Bridge to the Inn. I b'lieve our Merry's had enough destruction for the day." As he spoke, Merry felt the pressure of Pippin's hand on his dead arm, but not the warmth of Pip's touch.  
  
"Not done, not done," Merry moaned. Couldn't Pippin understand that every last bit of it must come down, every ugly house and factory, every vestige of Big People and Saruman's spite in their land? Everything must be put right, right and Shirelike, clean and sweet and lovely again, as it had been when they were innocent and young.  
  
When they were innocent and young, three short years before.  
  
"But, don't you see, Merry?" Pippin asked, voice lilting, "That was the last of it. The last in all the Shire, I expect. You can rest now, Merry dear. It's all done with. All done now."  
  
But Merry could not see: everywhere he looked he saw ruination.   
  
Merry pulled up panting madly, his feet and legs and trousers all furry with the dust of the road. Where he'd come to, he could not have said, only that he'd found himself on a narrow track between fields of barley, green and tender under the Litheday sun.  
  
Merry felt, suddenly, the balance of the year teetering, the past behind, the future ahead, on this day that did not truly belong to any year.  
  
He stopped, finally stopped, as if he'd been running for years, for the first time in a long stretch of constant motion, and heard the birds twitter in the air, and felt the sun hot on his hair and smelled the sweet brown richness of the tilled and planted fields.  
  
"Oh!" he cried aloud, also quite suddenly, and the tears that sprang to his eyes were, for once, not tears of grief, lost and bitterness, but because he'd tasted, in that moment, the sweetness of the earth, as he'd thought he might never taste it again.  
  
Along the path toward him walked a lass, crowned with daisies, her green skirts swaying like a bell, and a basket over her arm. Merry thought, seeing her from afar, that it might be that he knew her, and when she came close, and the basket fell down from her hand, he knew it to be so, knew her absolutely, for her hair was brown and rich like the earth, and her brown eyes full of a clean warm light, and her body ripe and bonny and round.  
  
She walked to him without shyness or fear, lifting her hands (oh, so warmly) to cup his face, and Merry's own arms wrapped close, so familiar and loved and necessary to him that they might have been together, loved and loving, for a hundred years, and not apart for three.  
  
"Estella!" Merry breathed, in wonder and delight, but Estella said nothing, only raised her lips to his and claimed them, her mouth sweet as apples at the end of summer.  
  
But summer was not ending for him now. Indeed, Merry felt the warmth—the fullness of the year—had only begun to begin.   
  
But in Michel Delving, Pippin could not help but wonder why, when he took Diamond's hand with her parents beaming on, her fingers did not warm in his, and when she smiled at him, why here eyes did not light, and when he kissed her, only a small, chaste little kiss, over in an instant, her soft mouth remained still, cool and perfect as a rosebud in June.  
  
Or like a lovely pond frozen over by winter.  
  
He wondered, too, why only his heart seemed to beat fast and why, really, Diamond's mother and father should be smiling at him so widely, and so very, very, very much. 


End file.
